Maru's Mun Journal

So, after last night's election in the USA, I have this cheerful political goddess in my head going hornfingers all over because the brokenness of the system and all those shitty voting computers couldn't steal the election this time, and all the shady creeps were thwarted. After all, her canon is all about voting computers and why they are a Bad Thing. She is making atrocious jokes in my head about people being fired because the dubious fix in Ohio didn't work out after all. Her own Xanatos gambit in canon started in Florida, so she's quietly cackling to herself that Florida STILL didn't get its stuff together.

And then, I have this dead Ostrogoth king being grimly satisfied at the defeat of wishful thinking this linked article declares, and finding his view of 'fate' mirrored in the facts-and-faith dichotomy of it. The world is all that which is the case, what has happened stays happened, and people have to deal with it instead of flailing and acting entitled. Nobody is entitled to their version of reality. Nobody is entitled to ANYTHING except that which is granted in laws and contracts, and if those aren't kept, you can sue in due process. All the rest just clouds your vision and makes you unable to deal with what's coming -- and while there is never any guarantee, it is better to go with the most likely event, and prepare accordingly. Sandy could have pulled an Irene, but it's better to prepare for an Irene than face a Sandy unprepared. Same goes for intricate mathematical projections of likely election outcomes, so the pity for dramatically sore losers is limited. That's what Teja is about, actually: his idea of 'fate' combines the 'that-which-is-the-case' type of fact-set, plus a very likely projection of the immediate future, growing uncanny by adding an complete lack of wishful thinking when facts + accurate projections clearly tell otherwise. Teja, although 'conservative' to the bone, would very much approve of the suddenly restored good political sense of those strange people in the Lands Beyond The Sea.

I think they both get an EP tonight where they can get the chance to voice those opinions to all comers, and to drink to Obama's victory. Poins can be hung over for a change and shut up with the blank verse already so I have the brainwidth for my political pups.-

Here is me, with Teja's work shirt and his weapon, so to speak...



Also, the Nazgul found a Lego Loki for me at the Lego shop, an official one on a keychain. He'll go on my backpack and come everywhere with me.-

Sal: yes, he's one of the least fun people to read I've ever met
in canon at least

Maru: yep -- he is grim, entirely serious, full of his own importance, thinks he's the only one who really understands the world, and tries to ruin everybody's enjoyment of absolutely everything by randomly spreading doom and gloom at every chance he gets

Sal: eeyore in chain mail

Maru: you win an internet for that remark

1 -- This:



Seems that happens a lot around the circles of people I'm in.

2 -- Character bleed. No, not just the AU version of Sherlock who's trying to troll Antinoos in this thread, with varied success, as Antinoos is a bit too jaded as an urbane citizen of the Roman empire in its heyday to be much impressed with new deities and tales of far-away countries. He's been to the faraway countries, and sampled new cults the way you'd savour the cuisine of your holiday destination. A certain barbarian from a few centuries later would have been much more impressed when he was new. And in fact, it was that barbarian (in his current Milli!incarnation) who gave me the character bleed today. I was having chai latte with the Nazgul in the usual drama coffee shop, and the drama of the day was two teenagers of apparently different gender snogging and canoodling in a corner near to us. They were canoodling quite intense, and even when the Nazgul got out her shinai to fiddle with it, they didn't even notice it. What's a bamboo sword when you can poke each other strategically through your clothes? In any case, I had this Milliways security member in my head chomping at the bit to interfere, and I went 'This is not our jurisdiction' and 'We don't have a Security badge and a battle axe here!' at that headvoice over and over again, assuring him that even if the Nazgul's bamboo sword was a real katana, it's not our business what these kids do. Even if they'd taken off all their clothes and proceeded to bonk all over the coffee shop's nice big brown leather ottomans, it wouldn't have been my business...

But it was irritating, not for the nigh-bonkage as such, but for reminding that headvoice (= entity that is part of me) that it's not my business.

Here in Prien, there is a street named for the author of Teja's canon!

Turns out he used to spend many summers in this area while he lived in Munich, and later on, he even wrote a short historical novel about it, which I have promptly found online at Projekt Gutenberg (German version, of course) and have now started reading. It's billed as a 'short novel from the migration era' (just like the infamous 'Gelimer'), and I can't say anything about it as I have only just started reading it...

A while ago, before I got my smartphone that does everything, I bought a Philips MP3 player because it was the most affordable brand name one that did everything I wanted and not MORE -- I didn't want one with video capability. I had to register the warranty with their web site for it to become valid, so I did.

Since then, they've been sending me emails with advertising for nice cool superfluous electronic products that I don't have the spare money for. But generally cool stuff, so I never felt the need to send them an email to tell them to stop, nor declare their messages spam so my Thunderbird would eat them.

Today, they sent me one for special full spectrum lights that would help me wake up in the darker mornings -- darker by an hour now, because we turned clocks back today. Good and sensible timing, especially for all the S.A.D. sufferers.

I, however, don't get that sort of winter blues. I love autumn and enjoy bright short winter days. Even if I had money to spare for cool superfluous electronics, I wouldn't want that one.

But I happen to have a fictional character in Milliways who does, and for whom affordability isn't the question. Now I just need a plotlet to get something like that to him...

It's fun to sit at my computer with enough coffee to fuel my brain, the cats curled up and sleeping right beside me, and write a 4,800 word light essay-let about bodice rippers that I will actually be paid good money for. I didn't know I know so much about romance novels, but between being in a game founded by a professional romance writer as a playground for her friends, my main Milli!charrie having a lover from a science fiction detective romance series (Oh, I will go on about genre pile-ups! And tropes!), all the borderline purple stuff in Laurel K. Hamilton, and my mother with her horrid preference for Rosamunde Pilcher, I can wing this. Off the cuff. Without getting professorial or defensive or derisive or snarky. And I will totally mention Charlie Monroe, just because I can. Getting paid for mentioning my Milli!Teja's lover is utterly cool.

By which I keep my envy at bay, because the Nazgul seems to have landed the coolest job evah. It's probably not all right to say which exactly (because that automatically tells you where), but it's a job that quite a lot of you here on my flist is either secretly dying, or openly studying very hard, to get. And she has it since today. Just like that. The downside is, it seems to pay peanuts and eggshells, but then, OMG, she really gets to have Lirael's old job, in a way...

Four-tag thread with Ramon Salazar accomplished as planned.-

**gloats**

carolinw found this:

Why we like Rice, Hamilton, and Harris...

And from alchemistseraph, I gank this:

Give me a character from any fandom you know that I play and I will tell you:
a. My favourite thing about that character.
b. My least favourite thing about that character.
c. One person I would ship them with in their own verse.
d. One crossover ship for them I think would be neat.
e. One crossover universe for them I think would be even neater.
f. Their ship from hell.
g. Their song.
h. The title of their biography or autobiography.
i. The last bad dream they had.
j. How they're gonna shuffle off the mortal coil, if they haven't already.