This Song Has No Title

I toy with the idea of posting regularly here about books or games, or just random life stuff. But I feel very flat these days with little interest in anything. It doesn’t help that I’m not getting enough sleep.

There is so little good going on right now; it feels pointless to do anything.

Spring Cleaning

Every so often — not as I should — I go through my supply cabinet. It’s a clear plastic thing on wheels, with shallow drawers; think desk drawers. It holds OTC medical stuff, prescription medical stuff, printing paper, stickers, bills, Important Paperwork, free samples, rubber stamps. I pick out what I want to keep, and what I don’t need anymore.

I started this process last week. And this time, I’m including going through my books.

I tend to read books like browsing hors d’oeuvres. Read a bit of this one, a bit of that one. Do I want to read the 90s fantasy I started? Nah, I want to read about ancient Greece today. I used to read a book straight through; I haven’t done that in the last couple years. I also used to believe I wanted to keep every book I owned. I wanted to.

But I won’t be able to keep every book I own. I can’t stay in this house, and my finances dictate I won’t be buying a house. I’ll be renting. Likely I won’t have room for all my books.

So this year, it’s spring cleaning for my books, too. Among the ones I know will be donated to the local library are most of my Patricia McKillip hardcovers. Most of my favorites of hers are in paperback. Other hardcovers will have to go as well, simply because hardcovers take up more space than paperbacks.

Then there’s the books I’m not sure I like anymore. I enjoyed Elizabeth Bear’s A Companion to Wolves and its sequels. But the blithe depiction of a female character becoming a man through surgeries and herbs threw me out of the story. I’m keeping the first three The Eternal Sky books.

Some of my other favorite authors are getting culled. Tanith Lee’s YA books are going. Andre Norton’s later co-authored books are going. I haven’t made up my mind about Elizabeth Hand’s Winterlong, Aestival Tide and Icarus Descending. Waking the Moon and Black Light are keepers.

I used to feel .. disloyal is the best word … if I didn’t keep all of an author’s books. As well as a sense that I couldn’t. Some of these books have been part of my life for years, lugged from place to place, replaced when lost or irreparably damaged.

I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m not sure if it’s getting older, increased maturity, or a sense of relief at no longer believing I have to keep things, even if I don’t enjoy them anymore. There will be a little sadness and regret in the process, but afterward, I think there will be satisfaction, too.

This is the anniversary of the last death in my family in 2021-2022.

My older sister died on December 21.

My nephew on February 24. He was only 40, and left behind a little boy.

His dad, my older brother, on April 24.

Spent much of the year numb. I talked to friends when the numbness broke. When they ask, I tell them I’m doing okay.

I’m not doing okay. I haven’t been doing okay for awhile now. But I can’t tell them that. They’re my friends, not therapists. I can only unburden myself with them for so long.

It should have been me. It should have been me. It should have been me.

My Thoughts On Yaoi

Ute is a Jew. Alix is a Jew. They belong to different denominations of Judaism. The denomination Alix belongs to doesn’t recognize Ute as a Jew. To the rest of the world, she is.

Alix should know this. She doesn’t have to like it or agree with it, but that’s besides the point. It’s a religious difference that can and does lead to religious disputes: disputes that should remain between the people involved. Getting one side to accept the other’s point of view during a dispute can be difficult if not impossible. Alix should know this, too.

Apparently she asked Ute to change the name of her book because she saw it as cultural appropriation. Ute didn’t. That’s her prerogative, no matter how much Alix disliked it. And after, Alix started saying Ute was pretending to be a Jew, wasn’t Jewish, etc.

Now.

If you want someone to do you a favor, you don’t insult them. If they turn you down, well, sure, you can…but you kill any chance of them agreeing to do something you ask, or help you, or even listen to you, in the future. Alix should know this.

So what was the point of continuing to insult Ute on various platforms? What was it supposed to accomplish? Convince people she wasn’t a real Jew? Get people to not buy her book? To make her feel bad? To punish her for… what, exactly? Not doing what Alix wanted? Out of jealousy?

I’ll take the latter for $1000, Mr. Trebec.

I have no concrete evidence of this, no receipts, no screenshots, no emails. Nothing but my gut feeling and the experience of seeing similar dynamics in different situations. But I’m going to lay out why I feel jealousy is the root cause of this clusterfuck feud.

Mainly the claim using “grass widow” was cultural appropriation. When Exulansic dug up evidence that its origins were not Yiddish, the talk about it seemed to just… disappear. No posts about being mistaken, no “Oops, my bad.” I’m not on every social media and there’s an excellent chance I missed it. But still. I noticed that absence.

How long had Ute been talking about her book? How long had its title been out there? Why make the cultural appropriation claim public now, when it was going to press?

There were other comments — not from Alix — that made me think there was a whole lot of “Look at that bitch eating crackers” going on. Second-hand resentment, if you will. Ute promoted her book too much, Ute posts on her blog too much, etc. But the one that caught my eye was in response to another comment about Alix delaying GenderMapper for a month: “Yeah, a month talking about transwidows instead of gendermapper.”

Nothing about Alix being in danger. Just whining that they’d have to talk about transwidows. Like they’re forced to read blogs and watch videos with topics they don’t like.

Alix was cruel to Ute out of jealousy and it blew up out of her control. I hope whatever pleasure and/or satisfaction she got was worth it.

There’s more I wanted to say but it’s after 2 am, and I’m tired. I may post those thoughts later, or I may not.

Public Service Announcement

“Memento mori.”

Body Count

Tags

random stuff

Went through the pens. Seven no longer work; ink’s all dried up. I found a strawberry-scented mini highlighter a friend gave me years ago. It still works (and still smells like strawberry). Do highlighters run dry if the cap stays on?

One that survived the sorting is a pen I’ve been using to write the horrible horror story I started last year. I’m glad of that; I’d like to finish with it.

Also in the cup were two pairs of nail clippers and eight dice. I discovered a hairline crack in the side of the cup as well. Damn, Godiva, you sure are cheap for such a high-end company.

The true Sorting Hat

Time for another sorting of the pens.

I keep my pens — colored gel ink, Papermate, old Bics, ones swiped from Olga’s years ago, mechanical pencils, pens from various other sources — in a Godiva’s hot chocolate cup. The cup was a Christmas gift from a relative, that chipped on the rim shortly after I got it. (You’d think Godiva’s would have sturdier stuff.) So I turned it into a pen holder.

It was overflowing at one point. Four years ago I went through and tested every single pen and marker in it, since I’d had some of them for at least a decade. About 80% went in the trash because they didn’t work.

The cup’s overflowing again, and when I went to write down a phone number for a legal issue, I had to go through three before I found one that wasn’t dried up

One of these days I’ll use up the colored ink pens, and my old calligraphy set. But not yet.

I thought I had a thing here…

An image of the Norns at the foot of Yggdrasil. I can’t find it now.

It’s been so long since I’ve been here. I don’t know how anything works.

But, anyway — I don’t see my Norns image, so have an old piece of Don Maitz’ work.

ETA: Preview showed the banner, yay! Have the Maitz anyway. Love his stuff.

The Three Loyalties

Tags

WoW, WrA

Loyalty can be described in three ways, Sir Kendrick once said. Loyalty of the hand, loyalty of the head, loyalty of the heart.

Loyalty of the hand is perhaps the quotidian. The hired help earning her pay, the craftsman completing a customer’s order, the soldier or guard who signs her name for the weekly silver, a bunk and three meals.   As long as they receive their coin, they’re content. Another layer (or view, if you will) is the person who carries out the will of another, without acceptance or approval of that other’s goals.

Loyalty of the head…(here Sir Kendrick asked for a top-off of his Dalaran red, and his slippers to be brought from the warming-rack). It is a calculated loyalty, borne often of necessity and circumstance. You follow because of said person’s abilities and capability.  Another layer (again) is the labor not of one’s back, but one’s wit and will. What you can do to help them achieve their goals, to protect them, to improve them.

Loyalty of the heart … ah.  The person, the cause, is cherished. Loved. That’s easy enough to understand, yes? But another view, or layer, is the absolute belief in that which holds your loyalty. It’s so much a part of your life you can’t imagine being without it.  That you would do anything for it.

They overlap at times, these three ways. You may only experience one or two, instead of all three. And sometimes they grow or fade as time passes and people and the world change.

Writing Sir Kendrick started me thinking about those full moon nights when he would don his favorite blue dress and break open the Dalaran red, and talk. I’ve been thinking about loyalty lately, since that horrific night in Elwynn when Demetrius presented me with that ax he’d found in the ruins of his old family estate. The pleasure his gift and his words of respect gave me was genuine. And yet… they didn’t quite feel like mine. Rather, as if they were from the past, echoing through us. An effect of that damned oath again? Or do I just hope that it is, because I don’t like the thought that IThefeel pride in serving this man.

Aneokame has my loyalty hand, head and heart. So does Gavia.  For “the flock”, it’s of the head.

Loyalty to my lord is a matter of the hand, possibly – in part, at least – of the head. Nothing else. I think of those sworn to House Haethon, and others, and envy them their chance of a lord who could claim all three.

Experimenting

Tags

books, random stuff, RH, WoW, WrA

I’m going to be posting different things here: writing bits (mostly WoW-related), thoughts on books, book reviews, that kind of thing.