Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

We picked up our rings yesterday, yay! And, extra special bonus: Both of my rings fit, despite the fact that I forgot which hand I'd ordered the first ring for, and had to guess about which hand to order the second ring for.

With that delightful announcement out of the way, I have a (completely unrelated) challenge for myself:
On our trip back from Denver, I told kittenpants about E-prime, a variant of the English language in which a speaker or writer cannot use any form of 'to be' - no 'is', 'was', 'will be', or related construction has a place. This forces a writer to use an active voice (which also implies that a writer cannot hide the actor in a sentence -- if you need something, you have to say "I need this" rather than "this is needed" and so on). It also clears up some linguistic entanglements and forces a speaker to separate traits/conditions from behaviour (i.e. you can't say "John is an asshole", but you can say "John said rude things to me on the phone again").

I had the habit of speaking and writing in E-prime for quite a while, but have drifted away from it in the last year or two. I find that training myself to think in E-prime has a positive effect on my magical practice (and on the clarity of my communication in general), so it seemed like a good idea to try and go back to it.

So I think that for the next thirty days or so, at least, I will try to use E-prime for all my writing. I find it more difficult to do it speaking, so I will also practice that, but don't want to set a firm goal about it. I trust that you lot will point out where I fail, won't you?

EDIT: I do, of course, except fiction from this challenge, as I have spent enough time polishing that style that I don't want to lose it. I also except Balderdash answers, since apparently people already try to guess the answer by determining which answer they think I wrote, and I hate to make things too easy. :)

EDIT: Thanks to the people who caught me screwing up *my example*. I have gotten so far out of the habit of this that I totally missed it. Sheesh.

Apparently, saffronhare will be out of town on the date set for the Wild Hare Beltane. That means that I'm doing the priesty bits all by my onesies. And that means you can more or less loook forward to it being all Welsh and whatnot. You know why? Because I want to get to say "Agorer y pyrth!", that's why. "Wele'r tân cysygredig" is fun, too.

Of course, there's always the possibility that someone will volunteer to help lead the rite. That would reduce the chance of Welsh by 50%, according to my calculations. (motivate, motivate, motivate)
:)

I just cut my tongue on a peppermint. It's possibly the stupidest injury I've ever had. It's well beyond ordinary stupid, the sort of stupid you don't admit to. It's gloriously stupid, the sort of thing that you have to go tell other people about because you can't believe you ever did anything so stupid.

But what do you expect on a Monday, especially when the preceeding weekend included so little rest? Friday night was gaming night, and saw the end of a year+ D&D campaign. I'm hoping to transitions my character into some other game -- I enjoy these occasional instances of getting to behave like a tiny 12-year-old sorceror with mild autism and a tendency to turn into an eight-foot-tall, four-armed gorilla monster at the worst possible moments. It's good for the soul.

Saturday was full of ritual prep. I should have gone to fyreseer and akaashben's housewarming party, but had so much ritual prep to do that I couldn't party in good conscience. Stupid conscience. It's probably just as well. I have all the social ability of a mildly autistic four-armed gorilla monster (it's a theme!) and I needed it all for Sunday's ritual.

Sunday was Gaia Community's Yule ritual, which was not an all-singing, all-dancing ritual extravaganza with a cast of thousands, but desperately wanted to be. It felt like a good ritual, and I hope people experienced it that way. The symbolism was awfully simple, and I was hoping it would come off in that way where the simple things are the most profound, instead of the way in which things just feel facile. No way to tell, really. I did make it through all of my speaking parts without swearing, which I thought was a meaningful accomplishment. In my personal practice, it's perfectly fine to address a rude word to a deity or to proclaim dirty poetry to them, provided it's accurate to the deity in question and their qualities, but I understand that's not the usual expectation. I'm working on it.

And now, two days of work, and I'm off for vacation. Life is rough.

I spent some quality time on the ADF website last night, doing some work on tonight's Wild Hare Samhain ritual (I am not a member, but triadruid is, and was kind enough to let me use his login to poke about), and discovered that they've got audio files of a very musical-sounding fellow speaking useful ritual words in Welsh. So I learned some of them, what fun! (No, really. Seriously. Welsh = fun sounds in my mouth.)

So I was thinking to myself that I should learn to speak Welsh. I mean, it's exactly the sort of skill that I can get excited about having: It'd be fun to practice, I could pretend that it's religiously motivated, and it would be almost completely useless in day to day existence. What could be better than that?

As it happens, this morning, I learned how to say "Plenty of cheese" in Gaelic. This joins a number of other odd phrases that I know in languages I don't speak. I mean, you learn things like 'yes', 'no', 'thank you', 'where's the bathroom', 'I don't speak your language', and 'I'd like a beer' as a matter of course, even if you never intend upon learning anything else in that language. But I, in my apparent quest for weird shit, have also learned to say things like:

• "Please stand clear of the doors" in Spanish
  
• "hedgehog" in Russian (thanks to kittenpants
  
• "My dear boy" in Welsh
  
• "Sheep with teeth" in Latin (thank you, Drix)
  
• "We wander around at night and are consumed by flames" in German (Thank you, Einsturzende Neubauten [who ought to have umlauts]
  

and other things of that nature.

I'm not counting anything odd I can say in French, since I'm fairly literate in French, and so odd phrases are more likely.

So then, what stupid things can you say in foreign languages you're not fluent in? Bonus points if the weird thing is the *only thing* you can say in that language. No points for "I can eat glass, it does not hurt me".

Language is a Virus.
Chock full of surrealist and dadaist writing tools and other fancy stuff.

Dredged up by nfin8ndefn8.

I'm finding myself running at 100-101 degrees right at the moment, so I can only assume that the cough I thought was Spring allergies has really been Spring plague, all the time. Therefore, if I have seen you in the last few days, I apologize.

This means that ritual and whatnot tomorrow will undoubtedly go on without me. I'd appreciate it if somebody would give my regards to Herself, apologies, etc., not wanting to continue my career as plague fairy.

On the upside, Crowley is suddenly a lot easier to deal with.

EDIT: Not very related, giant squid attacks. A whole gallery of giant squid vs. con. Thanks, ghastlycomic!

Also, if you've ever been to con, and you haven't read Bimbos of the Death Sun, you might think about doing so sometime. There's a brilliant bit in it about fan language, in which the main characters come to the conclusion that while the word "fandom" may fairly be used to denote all fans, it was faintly ridiculous to refer to the whole of a con's attendance as "condom". I'd like to quote that directly, but my neurons are running a little weird right now, and a google search on phrases containing the words "fandom AND condom" was unproductive, to say the least.

I noticed the use of the phrase "plans within plans" in the Children of Dune mini-series at at least two points in the first episode. I say this a lot myself, usually either followed or preceded with "wheels within wheels". I have in fact been saying it so long that I have forgotten where it came from. I am now assuming that Dune is in fact the source, but I'm not sure.
Then, I wonder if it might have been something from the Wheel of Time series. Of course, that doesn't negate the possibility that it was originally Dune-related - WoT picks up so many themes from Dune that it's not even funny.
Yep. 10 points for meme-tracking, and a bonus ten for meme-tracking something sci-fi related. Maybe this could be a drinking game. Watch this space.

I think I've been watching Dune for a week now. Well, to be fair, we're on Children of Dune now. 6 hours of Dune. I don't think it took me that long to read the book.
So, with all the problems in the world today, what I'm wondering is, who decided that it would be a good idea to pronounce the word for Paul Muad'dib's 'death commandos' as "feh-dyke-in"? In my mind it's always been "feh-dah-keen", like 'fellaheen' and 'mujahadeen' and other words like that. So the viewing has been punctuated by snickers every time Paul says "feh-dyke-in".
10 geek points to me, for complaining about pronunciation of words that don't even exist in real language.
The other thing that bothers me is that the events of Dune seem so timely and topical, and that they probably were timely and topical when the books were being written. It just makes me feel like we haven't made a whole lot of progress in the way we make policy about desired commodities found in desert regions.
Bah, 10 geek points for comparing sci-fi to politics.