yakalskovich | My brain so has been thoroughly eaten!

From the department for Technological Maintenance:
I have just brushed an ounce or so of oily black burnt dust from the fan of my dear little foldup computer. It so does breathe easier now. And the power supply doesn't grow hot any more. Am much relieved it wasn't anything worse. It would have so not done to have it break down on me when I - hopefully - log with Frarsie, Shivvie and Jill sometime this weekend.

Erm, and

gabby_2600, I am serious about logging from the Stone Inn. I've tried the murk, and it works very well. Mirc is much improved since I first encountered it somewhere around 1996. But do you think I could have logs from the server as well if I tell precisely you when it was afterwards? Just to be on the safe side? As our DSL connection is a bit flaky at times these recent weeks - "damn and blast T-Offline, the words coming easily from long habit" (Douglas Adams, only he said British Telecom, of course.). What with two Australians and one American and me in that RPG thing, we need to be a bit spotaneous.

I am so grateful Gabby said I can use the Stone Inn for that; I would never get all of them safely onto murk. Murk works very well, but is so not for the uninitiated.

From the department of Discworld RPG Madness:
I am so enjoying myself being

pteppicymon to Frarsie's wonderfully laid-back Chidder (not_a_pirate) in the

discworld_rpg. It is rather intense at the moment, as I'm something of a "method writer" (as in "method actor"; I can't do distance, as I said by EMail to

schiarire). I filter the energy of any character or story through my own systems.

And then there's

margolotta, who's become quite a fixture in Ankh-Morpork and is getting rather worried about it, as she means to return to Bonk soon, or at least eventually. And then there's b-vurdy Gimel. Urgs! I needed names for random vampire ladies, and unwisely called one of them Gimel Metatronim. And did she ever cross over into the Ankh-Morpork of our RPG! She's everywhere by now, and doing the Loose Siege Engine thing as an NPC through many of the RPG LJs and the loggage. If there's a Storm fan here who knows Discworld as well and has time on her hands to play and needs her brain eaten for a while, here is a character who so needs to be taken in hand...

From the Personal Department:
"Watership Down" has arrived!! I am reading it to little Paul from next door every evening now, after

tekalynn mentioned a while back she'd loved it when she was seven. Paul is almost nine now. Frithrah, does he enjoy that book! It's a fat book, 650 pages in German, but we've already done a tenth. We'll do all those pages in a jiffy. Especially as Angela, Paul's mother, occasionally reads chapters to him at bed-time as well. I've reserved the chapters with El-ahrairah in them for myself, though.
Angela suspects me to be in love, heh! It's only the energy from the RPG in my system, though. It runs off into RL. Is welcome, too. It's spring, and instead of being tired, I am the most energetic I have been for a long, long time. I find myself being nice to my colleagues, even, and not at all angry at having to work. Work just happens naturally these days.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Awww, reading to kiddies -- one of the best things you can do! My oldest sister has either read to her kids or given them books on tape -- unabridged -- since they were babies. My nephew Ian is 16 and still either reads or listens to long books on tape. Actually today I found out that the Nightrunner series is going to available soon on CD and was going to buy it for him and his family.

As for Watership Down, gosh, I lot of people I know love that book dearly. Personally, I could not get over the fact that the book is about talking rabbits. I have a lot of imagination but somehow talking animals have always bothered me. We did have fun reading it in school, however, as the teacher assigned us to create furthers rabbit myths (tales among the rabbits) as well as write alternative endings and so on (he he, fan fic). My teacher that year, Mr. Crowley, was cool almost beyond words...

Don't think "talking rabbits" here. Just think "rabbits" Very natural and realistic rabbits, too. They just happen to "talk" among themselves because we humans would not otherwise understand the story being told to us. We humans think in language; the narrativium (such kudos to Terry Pratchett for thinking up that concept; I wouldn't know what I'd do without it!) needs to flow in language like a stream in its bed to get a story told.

More stories about El-ahrairah, indeed. Do you still have any of them? You teacher sounds amazing. Named Crowley, too! Heee-heee...

Everybody says what you say, that it's all symbolic, the rabbits are telepathic, not really talking, but nevertheless, it bugged me so bad. Just a quirk of mine.

Mr. Crowley was amazing. He was one of those teachers who, if the principal or other teachers had *really* known what he was doing, probably would have been "disciplined" or suspended for various things. He was in his early 40s, I think, and wore little glasses like John Lennon and had a huge head with very little hair on it. He was very innovative and also didn't believe kids (we were 11- and 12-year-olds) should be sheltered from stuff. (He was totally nonplused when I decided to read Shogun, which is full of sexual references and blood-letting... as long as I could discuss it, it was OK.) He was very frank and had no problem with kids reading whatever they wanted to and presented a lot of very "unvarnished" facts to us. He also encouraged a huge amount of creative expression in his students -- not just in writing but in history, math, even how to play games.

My friend Marialana and I adored this man so bad that the next year, when we went up to the middle school as seventh-graders, we would go down to the elementary school after school and visit him. For his birthday that year, we created a massive scrapbook in tribute, filled with all kinds of odd collages, lists, poems, stories. The year after that, the sixth grade was moved up to be part of the middle school and Mr. Crowley came with them. Dee (M's nickname) and I then started hanging out with him after school, in his classroom. I had a lot of cool conversations with him about "adult stuff" no other kids were interested in, like my obsession with the Beatles and Vampire Lestat. (Mr. Crowley at one point did a dramatic reading from VL for me, pointing out rather blatantly how sexual/homoerotic it was... although I didn't "get" that for at least 3 years!) He was just very cool.

Gradually we lost touch with Mr. Crowley but eventually Dee got back in touch with him. I think he left town for a while to travel around the country/world -- which would be typical of him, he used ot tell us stories of his wanderings. Anyway, in talking to him, Dee found out that the entire time he was traveling all over, he brought our scrapbook with him, as one of his most treasured possessions. I couldn't believe it!

I would love to find this man again, needless to say!

Oooh, he sounds so utterly fascinating. He's worth an LJ entry of his own, really, instead of just languishing unseen here in comments.-

I had one a bit like that, although he was probably a bit more elitist over all and came to what can be considered a bad or at least much more controversial end. Unfortunately, we do know where he is. He tought me English for large parts of what would have been Middle School and High School in your reckoning. I don't quite remember his actual name (a bit banal, it was), but my best friend and I nicknamed him "Parmandil", the friend-of-books, in Quenya. (I was into Tolkien even then. My Quenya name was Aldarien. Her's was Earien. We didn't need any Name Generators back then.)

I was thinking of posting about Mr. C. on his own. But I'm tired and leaving. I should be in bed now I'm sure, but I got watching this Roman history show (all week on Discovery channel) and Caleb was over and we can't miss such things... THEN I had to get packing afterward!

The do a Special Extended Version of your comment up there as an LJ entry after you slept, how about that? It's worth it, believe me.

Don't wonder if people suddenly start mentioning either the words "Aleister" or "Aziraphale", though...

::evil giggle::

My brain so has been thoroughly eaten!

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Mr. Crowley

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Re: Mr. Crowley