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Housefilk!

Last weekend was time for another gathering of the Atlanta filkers! This time, our host was jingoro (Daric Jackson), who lives in Doraville.

After we got done at the Cat Clinic, we came back home for a quick lunch, and then drove over to Athens to collect khaosworks. The trip was mostly uneventful, except for when a person tried to pull out across traffic right in front of me in a 45mph zone. I slammed on brakes and wrenched the wheel and ended up in the left turn lane facing the wrong way on the other side of the median. Thank god there was no traffic waiting there or I’d have had no where to go, and if I hadn’t moved to avoid the silly woman in the SUV, we’d have t-boned her in the front quarter panel or drivers door. It would have been very ugly.

As it was, we got to Sushi Yoko (formerly Sushi Yoshi), a local Japanese restaurant near Daric’s house. They had an extensive menu, and I ended up with the matsu (a combination of sushi, tempura, and teriyaki beef), while kitanzi had the take (the same combination of foods, except with sashimi instead of sushi). Everything was absolutely marvelous, especially the tempura which was perfectly battered and the teriyaki beef, which had strips of impossibly tender steak in a light teriyaki glaze. The gyoza appetizer I ordered was also done perfectly — the best I’ve had in quite a long time.

After topping the whole affair off with ice cream, we set off to the actual filk. I got a bit confused because we were approaching Daric’s house from the north rather than the south as I’ve done the last few times I’ve been to his house, but we found it without too much trouble and got set up inside. After everyone managed to get settled and tuned and supplied with drinks and chocolate, the music began.

in attendance were myself and kitanzi, khaosworks, Dave and Signe Wegener, jingoro and his daughter Megan, mrpsyklops and his daughter Jennifer, Jerrie Adkins, thatcrazycajun and Mary Mullholland, and Michael Liebmann. Because of the small crowd, we ended up doing a traditional PPorP bardic circle, ensuring that everyone got both a good chance and a good prodding to do something. 🙂 Highlights of the evening included Terence’s “Pulp Fiction” and his unfinished Scheherezade song, Jennifer Cooke doing “House of the Rising Sun” with her father, Mary’s Jubilee song, and Matt’s Buffy rap song. I played a variety of things, ranging from Poul Anderson’s “Mary O’Meara” to Dave Carter’s “Gun Metal Eyes” (which I learned from filker0 and spiritdance). At one point, Signe did a Vorkosigan song, so I followed it up one of my own, which I recently decided was actually finished, and I’ll post here shortly. I also did “Dungeonville” in there somewhere. There was also a thread of cat songs, after Jennifer said she always heard dog songs but no cat songs. This led to a number of cat songs, including “Overflowing Catbox Blues” performed by Michael, and “I Meant to Do That” performed by kitanzi, with a big singalong on the chorus.

We had some fun with political songs, as Matt did Roy Zimmerman’s “Defenders of Marriage”, prompting me to pull out and make an attempt at “Hell Froze Over Today” by the same author. (I want chords for that….drsnark, do you have them?)

One of the things I always look forward to when having a filk at jingoro‘s house is the anime music videos he always shows. He’s a creator of these fan produced videos as well as a collector, and it’s always fun to see the creative talent that goes into making them. I’ve acquired the software to do those myself, so we’ll see if I can manage to pull one off. Lot of work, but it looks like a lot of fun!

I borrowed khaosworks‘s Canon G3 camera and took a LOT of photos. You can find them here, though they still need to be captioned. Sorry about all the red-eye. 🙂

We ended up breaking up about 1am, and headed back home to crash. The next day, after kitanzi took him on a grocery run to Harry’s, I drove khaosworks home. We had a great time, and cant wait until the next filk.

Fighting the Loneliness

Our cat Dayna has always been a bit high strung and neurotic, but she had been getting increasingly clingy and needy with her requests for attention. We finally decided that she’s probably lonely from not having other cats around (something she had for the first five years of her life). So Saturday morning, kitanzi and I went down to The Cat Clinic of Roswell to see what they had available for adoption.

Quote of the Evening

“Is it just me, or does she look like a goth librarian?”
kitanzi, on Liv Tyler’s appearance at the Oscars

Reading list

So, I’m thinking that if I actually start talking about the books I’m reading, it’ll encourage me to spend more time reading them. I used to read a lot, but in recent years I’ve started spending too much time in front of the computer and not enough time with a book in my hand. Time to fix that.

Currently, I’m in the middle of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is one of the most entertaining general overviews of science and the history of science that I’ve ever come across. I really enjoy a genre of non-fiction that I call “anecdotal history”, by which I mean “history told in a nonfiction but entertaining manner”. I also have Kenneth Davis’s “Don’t Know Much About History”, which I’d read before but only recently reacquired.

Last week, I read Nerve.com’s Guide to Sexual Etiquette, which was a marvelously informative book with a droll style. It was slightly different in focus from The Bride Wore Black Leather (And He Looked Fabulous), which is a different sex etiquette book focusing more on altsex than more usual fare. And I’m reading Dan Savage’s Savage Love in pieces. As a collection of columns, its easy to read in small pieces. (What I sometimes refer to as a “bathroom book”).

So, what are YOU reading right now?

Quzzage!

Quizzage!

Clicky thing!

Amusing clicky thing, taken from aiela:

I love maps like this

A Californian’s View of the United States

Snow!

Yay, snow! It snowed it snowed it snowed!

Living my entire life in the southeastern United States, snow has never been the sort of thing we got enough of really lose its fascination. I love waking up and finding a soft blanket of white covering everything, seeing the frost in the trees and the air being impossibly crisp.

I love standing outside in the dark when the snow is falling heavy around me. I love curling up next to a fire with a good book, while outside heaven drifts down to the earth in tiny flakes.

Yeah, I like snow. Even if it’s just a half and inch and the whole city shuts down as a result. Folks from up north like to make fun of us for this, but I don’t care. I know the reasons, and I know that it will just be a memory in two days time. There’s no need to shovel, or salt the roads, or do any of those things, because it’s just a moment, and the moment will soon be gone.

But until then, there’s snow, and I am seven years old again and school is closed and mom has told me I can go out and play until lunchtime.

Bliss.

Adventures in newspeek

The following conversation occurred on #filkhaven this morning.

Gwenzilla boggles at a mailing list message.
<Gwenzilla> I have never seen anybody spell “library” with a “y”.
<Gwenzilla> Lybrary.
Gwenzilla> WTF?
<Gwenzilla> Am I just too pedantic? I mean, how could someone possibly think it might be spelled that way?
<phydeaux_work> Are they being silly, offhand?
<phydeaux_work> I know I used to have an “evylle grynne”
<phydeaux_work> But that was deliberate
phydeaux_work is amazed nobody’s yet called me on the grammatical error in my LJ “me in a box” posting
<doc> perhaps yt’s an ardent feminist womyn who has determymed that the letter “I” is a tool of the patryarchy and must be removed from all wryting to enure true equalyty?
Gwenzilla twitches.
<phydeaux_work glares at doc
<doc> or a new ager who thynks that usyng y for i makes it look more eldrytch and ancyent?
<phydeaux_work> femynyst, dude
<doc> oops. myssed yt. do you know how hard yt ys to wryte thys way?
<phydeaux_work> Y have a slyght ydea
<phydeaux_work> Gwen: Perhaps they misspelled lye-brary, after reading too much of HL Mencken’s caustic humor
Gwenzilla aies.
<doc> now, yf thei’re preppi new agers, thei wyll not onli replace the i with y, but vyce versa.
<doc> thys ys almost as bad as l33t speek 🙂
<phydeaux_work> Owys! That makes mi brayn ache!
Gwenzilla readies the knife.
<phydeaux_work> Y thynk Y’ll go and get miself some more tea ynstead

Thoughts on love

One of my dearest friends, behind a friends lock, posed to us, her friends, a series of questions on the nature of love, and expectations, and meeting the needs of partners while getting one’s own needs met. With her permission, I am reposting my answers to her questions here, since there are some people who read this journal who do not read that journal.

Page 107 of 141

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