Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

So, yesterday, triadruid and I were partaking of a late night Applebees dinner (because it's Kansas. If it's after 9 p.m., you pretty much have Applebees or Denny's), when I had some sort of neurological event.

I'd had a headache for a while, which was not alarming particularly, because I've also had sinus problems for the last lifetime, and I figured that was what that was about. When we got to the restaurant, I noticed that I was having a hard time reading the menu. I attributed that to the fact that the overhead light in our booth was out, but there was a street-light right outside the window that was all orange sodium and obnoxious. I assumed the halos and whatnot were artifacts of glare. But then, I started to fail at speaking. If you know me, you know I'm pretty good with words, so when I was consistently unable to pull up the word to describe a thing, and began to use the wrong small words, and slur my speaking, I was sort of alarmed. Then, pieces of my right side began to go numb.

At that point, triadruid, who had been trying to keep my brain engaged as I was fumbling, offered to take me in for medical attention. We spent ten minutes short of five hours in the Emergency Room. I had bloodwork and a CAT scan, all of which came back normal. So I really don't know what happened. By the time I had been in the waiting room about an hour, I was able to do all of the word puzzles in the newspaper without difficulty. I seem to be fine today.

The whole episode was very bizarre and I hope not to repeat it any time soon.

My brain is running oddly today. Yesterday, too. So people who are waiting on questions from me re: my last post will probably have to keep waiting until I can get back on track.

Last night I had a dream in which I was defending the use of masks in classical greek theatre to someone who was insisting that masks did not exist until the Renaissance. Very frustrating, and no research material is available in dreams.

Failed to get a massage from starwyse, even though I had an appointment. Work went to hell in a bucket at about 3 p.m. and I got out of the office late, then sat in traffic forever and a day. Still made it to the Social Justice meeting, though.

Social Justice is working on sending care packages to pagan soldiers (so if you happen to be or have been a pagan soldier, I'd sort of appreciate hearing what you think would be good to send in such a package). Highlight of the meeting was iron_clad dropping by, and getting to watch him ride away on zerself's little scooter. That's a day's worth of funny, right there.

To do list: ( Read more... )

When I die, lexpendragon gets my brain. I have already informed him that he may have to scrape it off a windshield. He is down with that.

The rest of you LJ-peeps are now in charge of guarding my brain when I kick the proverbial bucket, and keeping any brain-vultures, zombies, mad scientists and other disreputable types from stealing it before lexpendragon gets there. Can I count on you for that?

I don't have a lot of brain today for real posts with connective tissue and narrative structure. So this is what it is. (Hey, back off, I been sick.)

Compliments - I don't respond to compliments very gracefully in any area of life, but I am particularly graceless when it comes to expressions of attraction. Apparently, when my various parts fought for control of function, that function was grabbed by my inner 15 year old boy, who also runs my gaming compulsion, my sex drive, and my fashion sense. I'm ambivalent about whether or not anything should be done about this.

Being Human - Prepping to teach Excellence in Ritual again is making me ultra-sensitive to violations of the values system we use in the class. One of the key components is thinking well of others, which is to say that we 1) try not to mind-read people when they do things we don't understand, and 2) if we must assume something about their motives, to try to assume positive or neutral things about their motives until we know better, rather than assume they are trying to be evil dick monsters. I try to make this part of my practice for living a sane and happy life all year, but in the lead-up to class, it's very sharp in my brain.

Series Fiction - I'm disappointed in Laurell K Hamilton. I read her for the smut, and the smut in her latest was... lame. If I wanted to read about perfect people fucking perfectly, I'd read Harlequin romances. Laurell, I am depending on you to provide something a touch kinkier than that, and you are not delivering. I voiced this complaint to triadruid and he recommended that I read fan fiction instead. I'm not sure I want to go there.
On the other hand, I'm in the middle of Kushiel's Scion, which I'm not particularly reading for the smut, and it's been very good so far. I had forgotten how much I loved Phedre and Joscelyn, and Imriel is shaping up to be a worthwhile, if overly angsty character, too. Much better. Also, now that Jacquleyn Carey has three books in the series under her belt, she's decided that she doesn't have to stop and explain masochism to the vanillas every three pages, which makes this installment somewhat better than the others, in my estimation.

Icons - saffronhare pointed me at the crinkly_things icon community the other day, and I have some new shinies. Like this owl, for example. Thanks, saffronhare. :)

This is gonna be long, and it's probably gonna be dumb. I'm cutting it to spare you both. I'm writing it down, though, because it's sort of a Hey Wow moment for me. (It might be a Well Duh moment for you. In fact, I expect it. Feel free to pass by.)

As it turns out, my household has been talking about trying to eat better. Our hedging justification for this has been something along the lines of "No, we're not interested in dieting to lose weight or look good, or pander to the beauty-industrial complex, but wouldn't it be nice to be a little thinner? I mean, that would make it easier to fit better into the elevators at DragonCon, right? Just a little thinner. Then we wouldn't be so miserably hot in the summer, right?". And so on.

This is, of course, lame.( Read more... )

EDIT: And, gamera_spinning reminds me that it is Lent, which means that suddenly, everybody has fish on the menu. I love fish, and consequently, I love Lent. (I fail at Catholicism.)

I've been working on my tarot playlist, and I'm about half done with it. Sadly, the half that is done is not a user-friendly chunk, like "all the pentacles" or "all the court cards". Maybe soon I'll get to something postable.

However! Unexpected side effect: I can now call up the images and an interpretation of the card based only on the name (and the song I chose, if applicable). I have tried to learn to do this before, without success. Another piece of evidence to suggest that the best way for me to learn something is to give it a tune (or even a lot of thought about giving it a tune). Nice!

From a locked post somewhere:

She Says: My real problem (I think) is that I trust people to treat me the way that I try to treat them.

I Say: Oh hell, that never works. It presupposes that they are like you, and they're not. That's the whole damned problem with the Golden Rule -- it assumes that what I think is good treatment is the same as what you think is good treatment. You can completely be in compliance with this thing that is supposed to be the Backbone of All Real Religions, and still screw other people over because you think you're doing the right thing, but it still feels wrong to them.

I Want to Say: You know, that's one of the big reasons why nobody ever thinks they're the bad guy. Either they're trying to treat you like they want to be treated and totally not grasping that it's not the way you want to be treated, or you're doing the same thing to them, and it wounds them and they want to get back at you for it. Nobody ever says, "Hey, there's a person who has done me no wrong! I'm gonna go fuck them over!". Instead, we say "Hey, this person is having a problem, I'm going to go help them by ________", where the blank may be filled by any number of behaviors which are profoundly unsuitable. Then, you get to follow it up with "Hey! I tried to help them and they got mad! Ungrateful so-and-so, see if I am ever nice to you again!".

I understand that, absent the ability to read each other's minds, and without the depth of communication that makes mind-reading an obsolete concept, this is the best we can do. But why can't we see that this is the best we can do and sometimes it still goes wrong?

Asmodeus (my 160,000 mile, four-wheeled companion) has developed a hitch in his transmission, which is expressed by a general unwillingness to shift into fifth gear. He will eventually shift, and does not make a horrible CLUNK when he does, but where he used to transition smoothly to fifth at about 55 mph, he now whines and revs and finally turns over at about 62.

diermuid has suggested that he might be in need of more transmission fluid. I was having that thought myself, and will be giving that solution a test this evening. I am not keen on the idea that he might have hit the distinguished age where a rebuild or replacement of the tranny will be required. For lo, I will have a difficult time finding the money for that all at the same time, and also, it will not be easy to leave him at the mechanic's for an extended period of time. It's doable, but unpleasant to contemplate.
( In which I worry a lot, and talk about self-reliance )

Whiny goth post demands whiny goth icon. Sadly, I have no such icon, so poor William's troubles will have to suffice. This is your disclaimer.
( In which my brain hates me. )

On the upside, I've managed to train Pandora to produce a pretty reliable mix of dark cabaret, pseudo-nostalgia tunes, and neofolk, which makes me happy. Instrumental in this development have been the folks over at sepiachord, who regularly post very yummy playlists. Also, I'm wearing a gift from zianuray, a very nice blend from Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs called Miskatonic University -- all coffee and irish cream and deep wood. It's delightful. I have some hope that I can shake my brain back into some sort of useful functionality by the end of the day. Let's find out.

It's sort of neat to not discover that your brain is broken until you've already been playing with it for many years, fully long enough to have already found the workarounds. Then, the sudden understanding that your brain is broken is more of a curiosity than a problem.

Case in point, apparently other people can visualize things easily in their minds. Me, I have a hard time "seeing" anything in my brain unless I really work at it, and even then, it's pretty iffy. The pictures, they just don't happen. But words and numbers, I can do. So any time something requires "visualization", what I am actually doing is seeing or hearing the words that describe the thing in my head -- I "read" or "listen to" the thing I'm supposed to "see". I think that's sort of neat!

In other news, ( I am short and useful to have around. )