my childhood

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

popsonnet:

Tags:

#music #poetry #I figured it out at the last line #it’s the Ghost Tune! #(see here’s the thing) #(when I was maybe eight I had this fragment of tune stuck in my head) #(there were no words) #(so I couldn’t have Googled it even if my music-Googling prowess at the time had been higher than zero) #(every so often I would think about it again and wonder what it was) #(wonder if I would *ever* find out) #(and this went on for seven years) #(which remember was about half my life at the time) #(until my brother’s 11th birthday party) #(we were at the bowling alley playing and a song came over their radio) #(and it was the Ghost Tune) #(only it was a crowded bowling alley and I couldn’t make out any words to Google) #(luckily when I expressed my frustration about this Mom was like) #(‘oh isn’t it that Eiffel 65 song ‘I’m Blue’?’) #(I was *so* happy to finally know what it was) #(I didn’t even care that I came in 4th of 4 at bowling) #(I have been fond of this song ever since) #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Sort-of-tagged by eponymous-rose.

When you see this, post five memories that seem especially surreal out of context. Anyone who wants to play, consider yourself tagged!

1. “You know,” I remark to the people sitting on the cliff with me, “deli chicken and garlic hummus on a cinnamon-raisin bagel is actually pretty good.”

2. I’m hiding in one of the small storage hollows built into the benches. I decide I like it here. It’s comfortable. I feel safe. They’ll never find me.

3. They tell us that if we want, we can hold a holy book of our choice in our left hand to swear on. It isn’t until afterward that we realise my mother swore allegiance to the Queen of England on her first-born child.

4. I’m riding on a bicycle. There is a skeleton riding an identical bike next to me. If only the bikes could move, I think, then I would definitely be beating him.

5. The pre-teen wearing a top hat and pocketwatch shakes my hand. He tells me his name is Fierce.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #Brin talks about herself for a *reason* this time #(these memories are written in zig-zag order by the way) #(each memory occurs either before both the adjacent memories or after both of them) #(I didn’t really plan that but I like how it worked out) #meme

Quote ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

coast-modern:

The Love Letter to End All Love Letters

Dear Beatrice,
l will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors.

I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends.

I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess.

I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk.

I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.

I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall.

I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform.

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.

I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others.

I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation.

I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father.

I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious.

I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M.

I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them.

I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza.

I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture.

I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer.

I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.

I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping.

I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.

I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms.

I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much.

I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl.

I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes.

I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house.

I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.

I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home.

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment.

I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world.

I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.

I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen.

I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V.

I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try.

I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area.

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog.

I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go.

I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this.

I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry –and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned.

That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters
 

Tags:

#long post #A Series of Unfortunate Events #my childhood

Linkspam for people giving ace advice

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

queenieofaces:

Do you run an ace advice blog?  Do you frequently answer asks about asexuality?  Then you should probably read the below posts so you know how to sensitively answer some frequently asked questions about asexuality.  (Or you could read them because they’re interesting and being well-informed is generally a good idea!)

If someone asks you whether they’re asexual/how they should identify:

Sciatrix on why labeling people is a terrible idea

nextstepcake on how to answer these sorts of asks

If someone under the age of 18 asks whether they’re asexual:

Teen aces and the “you might not be asexual forever” disclaimer by me (here on The Asexual Agenda)

The average age of first sexual attraction is ten

Critique of Popular Reason on having their asexuality dismissed as a teenager

This entire Carnival of Aces was on teenagers, and this one was on age/ageism.

If someone asks about sex-repulsion/says they don’t want to have sex:

bessibels on why you should not pressure aces into having sex with their partners

Your Sex-Normative Ideas Ain’t News by The Ace Theist

beranyth on why you should not tell aces who have feeling guilty about not having sex that “it’s okay for asexuals to have sex”

I wrote up some ways that sex-repulsed/sex-averse aces are stigmatized in ace communities (here on The Asexual Agenda)

Here’s a linkspam on sex-aversion/sex-repulsion, and here’s a whole Carnival of Aces on sex-repulsion/sex-aversion.

If anyone asks about hormonal imbalances/medical issues/mental illness/autism causing asexuality:

ace-muslim on “Why don’t you get your hormones checked?”

anotherspoonie on asexuality and hip dysplasia

nightengalesnkd on the intersection of asexuality and disability

swankivy on how “asexual” should be a description of what you feel, not why

Here’s a whole Carnival on asexuality and disability, and here’s one on asexuality and autism.

If someone asks anything about asexuality and sexual violence:

Please give survivor-competent ace advice!

Things you can do to make ace spaces more welcoming for aces who have experienced sexual violence

Challenges Faced by Ace Survivors (here on The Asexual Agenda)

I have an entire tag on asexuality and sexual violence, and you should check out resourcesforacesurvivors, especially the #for supporters tag.

If someone has a question about masturbation/orgasms/anatomy:

Asexuality Archive has written an entire series on this!

I want to read a bunch more on asexuality but I haven’t the foggiest where to even start!

Have you considered checking out a linkspam?  Or maybe some of these linkspams?  Perhaps you would enjoy Carnival of Aces, which is conveniently divided up by topic.  Here’s a whole archive of articles on asexuality.  The Asexual Agenda’s blogroll is usually pretty up to date too.

Let’s give sensitive and respectful ace advice, yeah?

Tags:

#asexuality #there are some interesting things in here #most of them are things I’ve read before #but that particular link for ‘the average age of first sexual attraction is ten’ was new to me #it was a fascinating if somewhat uncomfortable read #yet another declaration of How Sexuality Works that completely fails to account for my existence #(I’m not talking about my asexuality) #(I’m talking about my sexual desires) #(I remember the firsts of puberty) #(the first hairs in various places) #(the moment I realised my breasts were definitely bigger than they had been before) #(the resignation I felt when I first saw blood on my toilet paper) #(but I don’t remember my first sexual fantasy) #(or the first time I felt arousal) #(I don’t remember ever being *surprised* by them) #(my earliest memories regarding them treat them as something that’s always been there) #(I find it mind-boggling that having been old enough to remember a time before is not only a thing but a *common* thing) #(common to the point that the existence of those of us who have always been so is easily missed) #sexuality and lack thereof #tag rambles #Possible TMI

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

eponymous-rose:

Pros of writing transcripts: Holy crap, look at all these details I never would’ve noticed otherwise! Whoa, I feel 1000% more confident with these character voices! Hey, there’s a fantastic idea for an fic/meta post/audio post! Boy, I sure do love typing things… that’s probably weird isn’t it. Haha. Yeah.

Cons of writing transcripts: Trying to decipher Caboose’s dialogue.

#some… of these are words? probably? #same goes for half of sarge’s sargeisms

If loving typing things is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Tags:

#Red vs Blue #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #one time when I was about nine I decided to transcribe the entirety of The Austere Academy so I could have it with me on my computer #(I’m pretty sure I had no idea ebooks were a thing) #(but I wouldn’t have been able to buy one anyway) #I would type a page or two whenever I was bored #I never completed it #but I still have the partial file #I typed 109 pages out of 221 #(109 pages of a Series of Unfortunate Events book is about 23.5 pages of OpenOffice) #(but still) #(~17.8k words) #tag rambles

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sesamestreet:

Happy birthday, Harry Potter!

Tags:

#Harry Potter #it’s 7:07 PM EDT and this is the first post on my dash to acknowledge Harry Potter’s birthday #we used to make it an occasion in my family when I was a kid #we would decorate the house with Potter-ish stuff and make brownies #and I think we made chocolate cauldrons one year? #good times

cosmic-llin asked: You are invited to share five facts about yourself and then copy and send this to 10 of your favourite followers.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

1. When my laptop became incapable of supporting its own monitor’s weight, I made a harness for it out of a loop of string and a keychain loop. The keychain loop is to make it adjustable: I can make the string shorter or longer (tilting the monitor forward or back) by winding more or less of it into the keychain loop. The harness won’t stop it from slamming shut if you tilt the laptop too far forward, but mostly it works pretty well.

2. I am enjoying having a hematine ring again way too much. You see, hematine is magnetic, and the aforementioned keychain loop is attracted to magnets. Thus, I’ve ended up playing around with that a lot. I’ve also been discovering just how many everyday objects respond to magnets. (Unfortunately, metal spoons are heavy enough that you can’t actually lift them with the power of a single magnetic ring.)

3. I am a Jew born on Sunday, and am therefore free to choose my own destiny. Yay loopholes! …oh god, maybe being born a Jew on Sunday destines you to enjoy playing Hunt the Loophole.

4. I don’t really like cake, and outright hate frosting. For about as long as I’ve been old enough to have major input into the decision, my birthday cakes have been made of ice cream, brownies, or both.

5. I have an entire bookcase filled with the products of the many, many art workshops I’ve participated in over the years. (Okay, so it’s a fairly small bookshelf: seven shelves, but each only 12” by 9”. And a couple of the things on it are dolls and other things I didn’t make. But it is full, and almost all with my art.)

Tags:

#meme #if you’re confused by 3 #the Monday’s Child rhyme doesn’t say anything about Sunday #only the Sabbath day #and that’s not the same thing #oh look an original post

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tree-whispering:

beep beep

 

mimibon:

What is that!

 

nge:

mim its a lighting bug or whatever they light up

 

mimibon:

WHAAAAAAT THATS SO COOL HOW DOES HE  DO THAT! ITS JUST A BUG BUT IT LIGHTS UP

 

somuchawkwerd:

lol it had never even occurred to my that there were parts of this planet where lightning bugs are not indigenous

 

miss-freeman:

I AM SO JEALOUS I WANT TINY LITTLE BUG LANTERNS

 

angelicfallacy:

It’s so weird to read people calling Fireflies, “Lightning Bugs”.

 

arcanelegacy:

Ah, regional differences in language. Lightning Bugs, fireflies… (Google also tells me that they are sometimes called “Moon Bugs”, “Fire Devils”, or, my new personal favorite, “Golden Sparklers”)

I used to have a lantern-shaped bug cage as a child. Many summer evenings I’d go out and see how many I could catch for my lantern-cage, before letting them all go at the end of the hunt. They’re so easy to catch, you know. They fly slowly, and they don’t try to flee from you.

Damn, I miss fireflies.

Tags:

#fireflies #my childhood #our home and cherished land #is not cherished by fireflies #(at least we have dandelions)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

(sort-of-tagged by eponymous-rose)

1. What’s the weirdest thing you did as a child?

That’s the sort of question where you just know you’re going to think of something weirder ten minutes after you hit “post”, but I’ll try.

I used to collect coupons. I didn’t use them, just collected them. I would carefully cut them out, trimming off the dotted lines around the edges while leaving the bar codes and fine print intact (this sometimes required curving the cut, but I tried very hard not to do that). I kept them in the bottom drawer of my dresser.

2. Five things you love about you!

a. I managed to learn how to type 80wpm without looking at the keyboard, despite never putting any effort into it. (Well, I played a little Typer Shark as a kid, but not that much, and I never took a class on touch-typing or anything like that.)

b. I can be very persevering when other people are counting on me.

c. I’m very good at checking expiration dates. I once looked at a juice box’s jumble of alphanumeric code (a code Mom had found impenetrable) and discerned the expiration date at a glance without having to search for it. (Silver lining of a food poisoning phobia.) Back when Canadian Goldfish bags only had production codes and no expiration dates, I even learned how to calculate the expiration date using the production code. (I determined the shelf life by examining an American Goldfish bag, which had both.)

d. My introspectiveness. I like that I can untangle at least some of the layers of weird in my brain, especially when it leads me to practical implications. (How many books of a series do you need to binge on in order to induce perseveration?* Does caffeine act as a short-term libido suppressant?**)

*Four.

**I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but I have every indication it ought to work. (I suppose I ought to do the test properly, with blinding. Mind you, even a placebo would be useful. It would be nice, about halfway through the 4 – 5 days of post-ovulation tiredness, to have a bit of a break.)

e. I have a pretty good body. Not a beautiful body, which I gather is what people tend to mean when they call a body “good”. (It looks plain, which is exactly how I like it.) Rather, it’s comfortable to live in.

3. Where is the one place you feel most at peace?

Floating in my bathtub. Unfortunately, I am now too tall to float in my bathtub. I’m pretty sure my quality of life noticeably decreased when that happened.

4. Do you have any summer plans?

Learning about geology and computer programming. The last ten days of May are the closest thing I’m getting to a summer break. (I am so taking December off.)

5. What is the most expensive thing you’ve ever purchased?

University education. Those two courses in question 4 alone cost me $1600, and that’s with Canadian subsidising. (Regarding the usual things: I’ve never bought a house or vehicle, and all of my computers over the years have cost less than $500 each, which is probably why they’ve been so crappy.)

(Well, I think part of why this computer is so crappy is because it’s lived too long. When I first bought it it was a five-year-old model: old, but young enough for developers to generally acknowledge that people are going to try to use their products on it. Now it’s an eight-year-old model, and nobody accounts for the possibility of eight-year-old computers. It would be too impractical.)

6. What is your sleep schedule like, if you have one?

I’ve found myself drifting back and sleeping less during my break from school, which probably says a lot about me. Right now it’s about 11:45 PM – 8:30 AM, give or take fifteen minutes on each. It’ll probably return to 12 – 9:10 once I start school again.

7. If you could relive one moment of your life, what would it be?

Well, my favourite memory is probably the time I went out dolphin-watching in the Atlantic (off Cape May) when I was about eleven or twelve. I felt…what do you call the opposite of sea-sickness? Sea-wellness, I suppose. The rocking of the boat made me euphoric rather than nauseated. And though I was having fun, time did not fly. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every second of those two hours.

The nice thing about having a favourite memory like that is that I might well be able to do something like it again.

(We did see dolphins, but as far as I’m concerned they were just a bonus.)

8. Do you have any secret talents? If so, what?

If I told you, they wouldn’t be secret anymore, would they.

(I suppose you could count some of the things in the “five things I love about me”.)

9. What do you hope gets invented before you die?

I have to agree with Rose on this one and say immortality. Failing that, a sufficiently effective and reliable treatment for Alzheimer’s soon enough that I need never worry about getting it myself. (An outright cure or a thyroid/HIV-style “you’ll be fine as long as you take your meds, but you can never go off them without becoming symptomatic”, either way.)

10. If you could have a super power, what would it be?

Wolverine-level healing factor (see also question 9). If it were only a milder healing factor on offer (does not extend lifespan, fatal injuries will still kill you), I’d probably rather go for unbreathing (in the Nethack sense), despite the potential for annoying side effects regarding consensual inhalant drugs. The number of water sports that I have seen people play on Daily Planet and thought “I would love to do that, if only I were immune to drowning”…

11. They say a friend will help you move and a best friend will help you move a body. Do you have a best friend?

I don’t think I know anyone who cares more about me than they care about not being an accomplice to murder/not allowing a murderer to go free. That’s probably for the best.

If we take a broader interpretation of “body”, I expect Mom, Brother, and possibly Dad would assist me in being someone’s caretaker (which would likely involve moving their body at some point). Not sure about non-relatives.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #(you may have noticed I talked about tiredness and heightened sex drive as if they were the same thing) #(that is because they are) #(and let me tell you once you figure *that* out there are all *kinds* of practical implications) #(caffeine is just the first one that came to mind) #meme #Possible TMI #you can be sort-of-tagged too if you like