In Morocco, you could buy leather babouches in the souks stamped with the Louis Vuitton logo pattern, in the traditional browns or fancy multicolor Murakami version. You could also get them in the Burberry plaid colors. In Hanoi, the fake Vuitton is in the form of custom covers for moto seats, and the fake Burberry is visored helmets with strips of plaid running front to back.

My favorite street treats so far are the little sugared donuts on a stick and tiny bags of rambutan purchased from ladies who want me to shoulder their baskets for a picture. I always pass on the picture, but take them up on some fruit. I haunted a sugar cane press for a few minutes yesterday at a night market, hoping someone would come by to turn the thing on and give me a drink, but no luck.

The older women exercising near Hoan Kiem lake early in the morning are fond of a stripper-quality hip swivel motion, repeated maybe a dozen times in each direction. Both genders slap their limbs with open hands, presumably to encourage good circulation.

This is kind of an odd question, but what do you guys think of the handwriting in this book. On the one hand, I do think my handwriting has quite an "accent" - I think it's both overly accurate and "incorrect" at the same time. But at the same time, perhaps because most of what I read is typed, some of the characters in this book seem... too lazy. For example, the ご seems inappropriately tilted. But I will admit that the characters are far more beautiful and elegant than anything I write... I dunno.
But yeah, would you say this is handwriting to aspire to enough to buy the book, or should I try to write even nicer than this?

Yesterday, I did 1,315 words on "Exuvium," and found THE END. It's the 70th piece I've written specifically for Sirenia Digest since Issue No. #0 went out to subscribers in December '05.

Today (what's left of it), I'm going to take some time to rest. I've done two stories in as many weeks, and I'll have to spend the next two or three days getting #48 together and out the door. Then I have to get serious about Blood Oranges and...well, other stuff.

Here in Providence, it's still cloudy. A strong wind last night, the sort that sets my nerves on edge. We did have about ten minutes of sun yesterday, from 3:14 p.m. (CST) until 3:24 or so.

And I think I should probably make an effort to leave the house today.

Last night, we watched Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009). It's a peculiarly quiet, still film. After the first half hour or so, I realized that the film's minimal use of dialogue, the bleak Spanish countryside, bleaker halls of Modernist concrete architecture, and that omnipresent hush were all conspiring to create a suffocating sense of unease. All in all, I have mixed feelings about the film, and suspect I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.

I think maybe the sun's trying to come out again...

From Hong Kong en route:

Tranfered in San Francisco to get here. That airport is old hat - been through there four times this year alone - but Hong Kong is new to me, and I kind of love it.

Mostly because here it is emphatically not the busiest travel day of the year, the way it was at Logan this morning. I rode to the airport in a half-hour-late shuttle van with two criminally entitled and chatty Harvard 1Ls ("Did you know at the Harvard/Yale game they yell 'Safety school! Safety school!'? Isn't that funny?" "They said at OCS that it's obvious I really want to be a politician from my resume, and I was like 'Well, yeah.'") and two (thankfully) mute MIT folks who, when the shuttle arrive (again, half an hour late) said to the driver "We'll be ready in five minutes." It was more like ten, and at one point during the wait, one of the dipshit 1Ls said to the other "Are we in Cambridge?" Because we were the last two people in the van, both headed to United gates, Dipshit #1 wanted to be friends. He did not get his wish. The airport, of course, was total amateur hour, from the dum-dums in front of me in the check-in line who hadn't heard that checking luggage costs money now and were totally outraged, to the woman in the security line who wondered if she had to take her keys out of her coat pocket before she put it through the x-ray machine.

SFO was a breeze, since I was headed straight for the International terminal, but it was still crowded and hectic. HKK, though? Downright subdued, and the noodle shops give you half an hour of free internet access if you buy something. Plus: a MUJI shop, and little realistic miniature meal magnets like the ones you can get in Tokyo. Signs above the drinking fountain suggest that if you have "acute respiratory sickness" to take a pass on using them, and if you want, you can pay a little money and take a goddamn shower. In line to board my flight for Ho Chi Minh City, I meet a guy from Denver who knows the owner of the place my parents take me to get pho when I visit them in Boulder. See: Hong Kong wins!

http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=kara-2&date=2009-11-28

から (kara-2)

    Meaning: from
    Example: From 9 to 5.

  [ View this entry online ]

  Notes:  
Sorry...no Notes exist yet for this entry...Add Note(s)

  Examples:  
Note: visit WWWJDIC to lookup any unknown words found in the example(s)...
Alternatively, view this page on POPjisyo.com or Rikai.com

• 以下のプルダウンメニューから、言語およびプラットフォームご利用いただけるバージョンが表示されます。   [ex #472]
From the pull down menu below language and the platform it is to be used on are displayed.

• 先週の木曜日からずっと雨が降っている。   [ex #473]
It has been raining since last Thursday.

• それをここから持って行け！   [ex #4844]
Get them out of here!

• 「オーストラリアからですか」とフィリピン人はたずねました。   [ex #4845]
"Are you from Australia?" asked the Filipino.

• 「結婚してからも私働いて構わないわよ」と彼女は言った。   [ex #4846]
"I don't mind if I keep working after we're married", she said.

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</ul>   See Also:  

• kara    (Several different から usages)
• made    (から(from), まで(to,till))

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  Comments:  

• #472
  以下のプルダウンメニューから、言語およびプラットフォームご利用いただけるバージョンが表示されますshould be: 以下のプルダウンメニューに、言語およびご利用頂けるプラットフォームのバージョンが表示されます。
  
  "From the pull down menu below language and the platform it is to be used on are displayed" should be: The pull down menu below displays the language and the available versions of the platform that can be used. (contributor: bamboo4)
  
  [ Add a Comment ]
  

The place where Bree works was mentioned and pictured in the New York Times today:

>>By the time we reach Phantom Ranch, its own side canyon, Bright Angel Creek, is deep in chilly shade. To reach the quiet huddle of stone and timber cabins under their grove of silvery cottonwoods, the trees tattered with old dry leaves, with a bunk waiting, and hot showers in the bathhouse, and the creek plashing by — relief floods in. But even though we’ve descended to 2,000 feet above sea level, it’s still freezing.

When the ranch bell rings for dinner, some two dozen guests troop from the cabins through the frigid dusk to the main lodge, where we quietly feast on stew, corn bread and salad. We’re from all over, all walks of life: a student from Quebec, a trucker from Kentucky, a fisherman from Alaska, a college student from New York, a woman in insurance, from Pennsylvania. All these trappings of people’s lives seem to fade in the context of this deep retreat from the world. We’re just people, making the pilgrimage from cradle to grave.

At 8 p.m. the dining room turns into a kind of mess hall. People sit around playing cards, or Trivial Pursuit, drinking wine or beer, and the counter opens for the sale of odds and ends. On a shelf sits the box for river mail, where letters wait for rafters coming downstream.<<

A chilly critical mass this evening, only a quarter of the usual number of riders due to the thanksgiving holiday. I wasn't quite feeling it for some reason, so I broke from the group somewhere near downtown and cycled home instead, quickly through the dark streets. (As a thanksgiving present to myself I got myself a very nice bike headlight.)

Ugh - feeling very unproductive & stagnated.

Some footage of Saffy the Cat retiring to her tree fortress last night;



Music is a traditional Japanese melody, "Moon Over Desolate Castle."

Twitter Sonnet #85

Melted cheese has outlived its usefulness.
Leaves spread before us like linoleum.
My friends, chlorophyll is ours to harness.
Sweeter and greener than petroleum.
Had a dream about Grey Goose jelly beans.
There was no rum or cream in my eggnog.
Deliver real substance by any means.
The woods were built by a well suited hog.
Lunch settles on the bottom of the day.
Yellow, thin sun sheet across the ceilings.
Hard vegetable charges are dropped into the bay.
Polyester explains sour feelings.
A green balloon sailed into Pac-Man's mouth.
And Superman will not save Brandon Routh.

I think I might finally be seeing the end of this sickness. Still a little sore in the abdomen, but I managed to sleep through the night, and my normal sitting positions aren't too uncomfortable. So I've my fingers crossed.

Listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller while drawing yesterday, I thought about what a curiously unfocused album it is. Although "Baby Be Mine" seems natural next to "The Girl is Mine" at first, the tones of the two songs are a bit wildly different, going from an earnest seduction to typical lightweight 80s Paul McCartney. The lyrics throughout the album seem simplistic and rigid, particularly "Beat It"--"You wanna be tough, better do what you can so beat it, but you wanna be bad." However, "Beat It" shines for its focus on guitar over synthesiser which hugely diminishes "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and several of the other songs. The strongest thing about the album is melody--the progressions on both "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" are wonderful and sort of ominous. The lyrics on "Billie Jean" are strange and mysteriously provocative of emotions enough to easily make it the best song on the album.

I almost said the lyrics were "compelling", but I've promised myself never to use that word in a review of anything from now on. People always say it, but what does it really mean? You're compelled to keep listening, or compelled to think about it, or dwell on it? All at the same time? We can do better than that.

>> Our airplanes hadn't advanced enough to go nonstop from New York [to Paris], so every flight went from La Guardia Airport at New York, to Gander in Newfoundland, then Shannon, Ireland, where we always stopped for breakfast—all the passengers and crew would go to the airport restaurant for the standard breakfast of porridge, steak and eggs, Irish bread and wonderful strawberry jam. It was a happy hour, with the few passengers—thirty was a big load—and crew all jovial and in a good mood with the ocean behind them and now only a couple of hours left to Paris. <<

Bob Buck, North star over my shoulder, p 290.

Yesterday photopagan and mrs_photopagan came over. As is traditional, we ate way too much (corned beef and potatoes, which is also traditional) and drank wine. I made a pie for the second time in my life and I think I baked it a little too long but it came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. Mr. and Mrs. P. brought over a Venture Brothers DVD, a show I've never seen but really enjoyed. We also watched the "Planet of the Dead" episode of Doctor Who. I think Lady Christina is one of my favorite one-off characters. She reminds me of somebody...can't think who...

Today, for Black Friday Mr. Darcy and I are avoiding the crowds and the door-busters and all that crap to go on another land-scouting expedition. This time we're looking in north Olympia. We did pick some particular places off of Redfin to look at, but the point of these trips isn't so much to find a place per se as to figure out what general area we want to look in. We're getting a later start than planned, but the weather's much nicer than last time so I think it'll be a good day. Ta!

• 13:12 Happy Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for all my animal friends, however long I get to know them. I lost a cat today. RIP Queen Moomintroll. #
• 11:57 All the cats are being very affectionate. I have Simon on my lap! That almost never happens. #
• 12:07 Wegmans seems to have lowered the price of a box of clementines from $7 99 to $6.99. It worked - I bought some. They're good. #

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Yesterday I did 1,252 words on the new vignette which, as of this writing, is still named "Exuvium."

The weather here in Providence has been grey and chilly and on-and-off rainy for days now. Or so it seems. I can't recall the last time I saw the sun. Then again, I've not left the House since Tuesday. Which really isn't that long, not for me. But the sun would be nice, shining in my office window.

The sea would be nice.

Please consider observing "Black Friday" by bidding on the current eBay auctions, which include a copy of the lettered edition of my long-out-of-print first novel (though it was published after my second and third novels, just before my fourth). Also, check out the Cephalopodmas ornaments in Spooky's Etsy shop, Dreaming Squid Dollworks.

Last night, we had trouble deciding whether to watch Wes Anderson's The Darjeeleng Limited (2007) again, or, instead, watch Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009). The Darjeeleng Limited won out, as we were both in need of a comfort film. Later in the night, we played WoW, our new undead characters, and met up inworld with scarletboi and memkhet.

No sun yet. It's not the sort of thing that comes when you call.

There's an app for that:

100% Geniuine Quantum Universe Splitter.

http://cheapuniverses.com/universesplitter/

http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=hitoiki&date=2009-11-27

一息 (hitoiki)

    Meaning: a short period of time
    Example: Don`t rest now work is almost finished.

  [ View this entry online ]

  Notes:  
hitoikide means [with one breath] and it is used to describe a short period of time, Usually in which something will accure.


休憩しないで、後一息仕事が終わりますよ。

Don`t rest now, works almost finished.


  Examples:  
Note: visit WWWJDIC to lookup any unknown words found in the example(s)...
Alternatively, view this page on POPjisyo.com or Rikai.com

• あと一息だ。   [ex #6594]
We're almost there.

• もう一息というところです。   [ex #6595]
It's getting there.

• もう一息努力すれば成功するだろう。 [T]   [ex #6596]
Make one more effort, and you will succeed.

• 一息いれようよ。 [T]   [ex #6597]
Let's take a break.

• 講師は一息入れてから、また話し続けた。 [T]   [ex #6598]
The speaker paused and then went on talking again.

• 座って、一息いれましょう。 [T]   [ex #6599]
Let's sit down and catch our breath.

• 彼女は新鮮な空気を一息吸いに浮ﾖ出た。 [T]   [ex #6600]
She went outside to get a breath of fresh air.

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</ul>
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You couldn't ask for a more perfect autumn day for a holiday, cool and breezy with the cold winter sun shining down brightly at high angles through the oak canopy, the streets devoid of all traffic and startlingly silent, some houses with twelve cars parked in front and the others with none. I took the little dog on a long holiday romp, running through the empty streets and chasing squirrels up the driveways towards columned southern mansions, spanish moss draped in front. Sara prepared a great little thanksgiving for us: me and her and ryan, ryan's dad, Azedah and Rob. Turkey and stuffing and potatoes and cranberry sauce. Saffron rice from azi, curry chicken from Rob. Pumpkin and mint-chocolate pies, Swiss chocolate and Belgian beer.

Now just me & the little dog back at home, drinking hot green tea.

I was watching a dorama today, and I think a character used パート to refer to a part-time job. Has anyone else heard this? Is this starting to take root? And is there any difference between パート and バイト／アルバイト, or is it just a matter of fashion?

You know what the weirdest thing is about the fire alarm that randomly goes off at least once every hour while I'm trying to sleep? There is no fire alarm. It'd been giving us trouble a couple years ago, going off whenever anyone cooked anything and other random times as well, not changing its behaviour with fresh batteries, which is usually what's indicated by frequent, short, spontaneous alarms. So we'd taken it down, and thought that was the end of it.

Now, years later . . . something has returned. Is it some vestige of the old alarm yet remaining in the ceiling or . . . something stranger? All I know for sure is its terrible wail wakes me in the night . . .

Technology's just fucking with me to-day. My computer crashed again (still need to put in that power supply) and the light bulb in my ceiling fan burnt out suddenly, as it seems to be doing more and more often.

Yesterday's tweets;

Had a dream about Grey Goose jelly beans.
There was no rum or cream in my eggnog.
Deliver real substance by any means.
The woods were built by a well suited hog.

I don't think eggnog agrees with me. I'm starting to think milk doesn't agree with me. I'm going through quite the metamorphosis. The last latte I had was over a month ago, and I remember it happened to be a really good latte, as though the drink was bidding me farewell. I have to think drinking coffee two to three times a day for ten years and suddenly stopping now has affected in me in more ways than I cannot yet identify. I don't know what's illness and what's just the new state of things. Aside from the phantom fire alarm, an occasional sharp pain in my lower left abdomen kept waking me up, too. Things have to go back to normal at some point, right?

I watched "Sleeper" last night, a seventh season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer guest starring Aimee Mann. I liked it better than I did the first time I watched it, but I still don't think it's one of the better episodes--Spike's problem with killing people in a trance in the end just seems to be re-treading territory of Spike's guilt that needed to be built on and explored further, not repeated. But I love how Mann's "Pavlov's Bell" fit the subject matter so well.

A photo I took was noticed by Cory Doctorow on boingboing today – ironically, I hadn't even meant to post it on Flickr, but he saw it on another forum and asked if I could make it available to blog. Glad the pic's hosted elsewhere because it's been, as we once would've said, slashdotted today.

I'm not sure where I left off in the grand epic of my life. Still working for the shirt guy on Chabanel. I'm picking up a little Hebrew because it's spoken around me all day. Getting the most out of that neighbourhood (viz), doing a few other freelance gigs. I continue to blog (my blog marks eight years next week), the only recent innovation there being that I now blog in French on Fridays.

I've been avoiding all things Gaga, suspecting I'd be hooked, sooner or later. Now I've seen the video for "Bad Romance," and, well, it's happened. There's such an weird and wonderful mix of influences here (The Eurythmics, Bowie, Nomi, Nina Hagan, Queen, Lene Lovich, Grace Jones, and, well, it just goes on and on). Wow.



The Lady can sing.