(no subject)

It's easier to get forgiveness than persimmons.

[Update: this was a typo for a related phrase that I thought was so marvelous that I'd make a livejournal post. But yes, I do like persimmons. And they're in season right now.]

books books books

A brief update, mostly to identify all the stuff I've been reading:

Chomsky's MA thesis The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew. Obsessively-formalized without any apparent sensitivity to what this formalism means. Most of that comes from its era.

Aliens and Linguists, by Walter E. Meyers, at the recommendation of ozarque. A fairly basic but entertaining exploration (in 1980) of how science fiction copes with language questions.

Ocean, the new comic miniseries by Warren Ellis. The opening three pages alone (and the surprise -- sort of -- on page 4) are worth the price of the comic. And it keeps up the quality (the preview doesn't capture the sense of wonder in it, though).

Various other comics, not nearly as good (Lucifer, Fables, Terra Obscura -- which is head-and-shoulders the best of those three, but still seems tired somehow). BPRD: The Dead is pretty good; it's nice to see Mignola writing again (preview here).

On my list of to-read, but holding off because I need rewards for doing work:
Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, which I got today because it's out in paperback.
Finder, still the best comic out there.
Volume 2 of the uneven Boneyard.

conversational randomness

I had a lovely conversation (first time in real time!) with anthrochica tonight. We got to confirm our mutual suspicions about each others' accents (apparently about right), talk grad school (not as much as I expected), avoid politics (rather well), exchange all sorts of creative book and extracurricular reading suggestions (see below) and try to work out if she friended me first or vice versa (we couldn't figure it out).

Among the other conversational detritus, I realized I needed to keep a list of things we talked about so I could share the links. Here it is:

The Brunching Shuttlecocks no longer make new material, but their Geek Hierarchy is worth understanding, and explains the Furry culture (oh my god, what is a fursona?), a Christian preachy homophobic evangelical variant of which came up today at bOINGbOING.

Speaking of furries (no, this wasn't the whole conversation, though it was probably the part where I laughed the hardest) -- we'd both somehow gotten a free copy of Wild Animus (I love that the publisher is called "Too Far" -- I should say so!). Then I remembered that exterra had released that copy on BookCrossing, panning it. (If you'd like to join BookCrossing, tell 'em I sent you.)

We also talked about imtboo's difficult role as Nadezda in Srbjana Biljanovic's Family Stories, and how it was difficult to watch, because it was so scary after the elections.

My last note -- though not the end of the conversation, just where I stopped making notes -- was to mention Roger Zelazny's Amber series, which I should really revisit, and to have recommended to me the His Dark Materials series. All in all, a good conversation. I wish we could have it in person.

quote of the night

arrived at jointly with anthrochica: "I'll be post-colonial in the post-Empire."