For the past few years I've been uncomfortable about receiving cash gifts
from people who are retired when I have a perfectly good job. So this year
I donated the total amounts of all my cash gifts and gift certificates to
tsunami relief. I still feel guilty though. I'm not sure if it's about
accepting the gifts instead of giving them back, or about giving the gifts
to charity instead of using them to indulge myself like my relatives
intended, or if it's about making a donation that doesn't hurt at all. I'll
have to think about this a bit more.

I stumbled upon a new self-revision technique today: after you have a full target-language draft, revise one page to completion, then do something else. Then revise the next page to completion, then do something else.

"Do something else" consists of a 5-10 minute distraction, like getting coffee, going to the bathroom, talking to someone, reading an article on the internet or taking care of a piece of administrative minutia (comme suite a la discussion concernant alumni/alumnae, I'm assuming that's the singular of minutiae?).

It's slow, it's not efficient, and if my boss knew I was working this way he'd give me a "reminder" about our quantitative objectives. But using this technique (and working with hard copy, not on-screen) I managed to get c.10,000 words of English draft copy all finalized except for proofreading (which needs to be done by someone else anyway) on a day when I hadn't done yoga, hadn't had breakfast, and was in a generally grumpy and non-revision mood.

I also have another enlightenment this morning, but I'm not sure at the moment whether it's a good idea to blog about it.

The reality of the whole tsunami disaster thing hasn't sunk in for me yet. I haven't even started absorbing it emotionally. So I see it on the front page and my first subconscious thought is "Why is this on the front page?" I read every article about it straight through because intellectually I know it's important, but I'm reading with an "I should be reading this" attitude rather than a "This is of interest" attitude. I know it will sink in eventually (it took about a week for Sept. 11 to sink in, it took a couple of weeks for Darfur to sink in), perhaps it's taking so long because the scale is so large, but until it does sink in I just look like a horrid terrible callous cold person :/.

The yoga lady on TV says to passively watch your thoughts float by without getting involved. That sounds like a cool skill. But HOW do you do it?

I am finding it extremely difficult to feel anything but ennui about my job lately. Which wouldn't be a huge problem if my job were more mechanical, but it's purely intellectual and I need to give it my complete mental focus. I've just had five days off, and I'm not looking forward to going back at all even though I've got just a three day week ahead of me, followed by a three day weekend.

religion and fanfic

A few random scribbles on religion and fanfic:

The important thing to remember is that religion is not a positive
experience for everyone who experiences it. Some people feel negatively
about religion as a result of their own negative experiences with their own
religion. Therefore, when introduce religion into fanfic in a fandom where
canon is completely secular, there are going to be some negative reviews
simply because you have introduced a new element that is negative for some
people. It's like if you wrote a teacher-student romance, you'd get a
visceral negative reaction from readers who were led on or exploited by
someone in a position of authority. That doesn't mean that religion HAS to
be completely avoided, but just understand that there will be some negative
reaction whenever religion is used, simply because an element that does not
exist in canon and is
negative for some readers has been introduced.

When the presence of religion does not contribute to the plot, the reaction
will be even worse because the use of religion will seem completely
gratuitous. Canon doesn't need religion to work, so if you want to use
religion in a fic it would have to be for a particular plot reason. When it
doesn't contribute to the plot, it seems at best irrelevant and at worst
preachy. For me personally, it give the impression that the author lacks
the ability to get inside a character's head, and has to replace the missing
elements with bits of their own self. It feels like the author cannot
imagine a person who isn't actively religious, which is not a good thing in
a secular fandom. Authors who cannot get inside the head of a person who is
not actively religious should write their own characters who can be as
religious as they want rather than appropriating existing secular characters
and making them religious because they are not creative enough to do
otherwise.

I associate [place where I grew up] with having no control over my own life.
Because I spent my whole childhood there, with the perpetual confusion and
not understand the world that comes with childhood. Then I spent my
adolescence and the first couple years of my adulthood there, with all the
constraints of strict parents and being the suburbs without being able to
drive and having to coordinate my use of the internet and telephone and
television and bathroom and piano and kitchen with three other people. So I
have all kinds of negative associations with that place; just the look and
the smell make me feel out of control.

I think the trick is to think of myself as a houseguest in some strange
place. I don't live there, I'm just visiting. Then I can come back home
and be in total control of my life.

The issue with sharia-based arbitration is not about religion or equality or separation of church and state. The big question is: why are people who are not qualified to interpret law allowed to make legally binding arbitration rulings?

Everyone who wants to do arbitration should have to study enough law so they are qualified to interpret law. This would ensure that all their decisions are in accordance with federal, provincial and local laws. They can then make decisions in accordance with whatever other rules or standards they want, just as long as the standards are fully disclosed to all parties involved, and the decisions do not violate any existing laws.

If potential arbitrators do not want to go to the trouble of studying law, they can be free to become mediators instead, so they can still mediate disputes, but their decisions would not be legally binding.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my cellphone freaking out - vibrating madly and playing Pachelbel's Canon at double speed and top volume. This could only mean one thing - HBP release date! There it was, right in my inbox: JULY 16! Thank you hpandthehalfbloodprince.org!

So after squeeing and blogging and emailing, I proceeded to have a shower. Just as I was finishing up my shower, I heard this HIDEOUS HIDEOUS noise. It was like the feedback you get when you point an open mike at a speaker, but a hundred times worse. Turns out this is my building's new fire alarm! I have to say it is the most effective fire alarm ever, because you want to get out of the building just to get away from the noise! So I threw on my pyjamas and coat and evacuated, my hair wet and tangled and dripping, no feminine hygiene products, no bra (down 14 flights of stairs - OUCH!), no socks, stupid slip-on shoes that kept falling off. I hung out in front of the building, alternately going inside to escape the cold and outside to escape the noise, until the firetrucks came. Turns out there was a broken sprinkler pipe in the basement. So I walked back up 14 flights of stairs (because the alarm was still going and the elevator doesn't work while the alarm is going). By this time it was 5 minutes until I had to leave for work, and there was all bedraggled and shivering in pjs and wet hair. So I called work and said I'd be a bit late (shouting over the alarm), got myself sorted out, and left, walking back down 14 flights of stairs because the elevators were still out of order.

More excitement before breakfast than I usually have in a whole day.

Harry Potter: July 16, 2005!

At my first job, we had two single-room washrooms. Each contained one
toilet and one sink; there were no stalls, just one locking door opening
onto the hallway. Although they were both identical, one was labelled men's
and one was labelled women's. Since both washrooms were completely
accessible, they both had that wheelchair icon on the door.

One day, a lady asked where the washroom was. I pointed her in the right
direction, then continued doing my work. She came back a few seconds later
all indignant. "But that's the HANDICAPPED washroom!" she huffed, sincerely
offended by the idea that she might have to use an accessible washroom.

It occurs to me that this story is a perfect metaphor for people who get all
offended when wished Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.

In a dream I had last night, there was a gumball machine that sold sugar-covered slices of bread. They weren't fried or sticky or anything, it was just normal bread covered with normal sugar, and somehow the sugar just stayed attached to the bread. And I don't know how the gumball machine managed to dispense bread slices, but it worked.

Backstory: one of the books I'm currently reading is about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor and was not particularly skilled in the art of fresco, the medium in which the chapel ceiling was to be done. Therefore, he was less than thrilled about being assigned to fresco the ceiling when he would rather be working on his pet project, a large sculpture for the Pope's tomb.

Story: Last night I dreamed that mi cielito was driving me around so I could do some errands. (This is odd, since IRL he doesn't drive). All the time he was complaining about having to drive me places because he's a boyfriend, not a chauffeur, and he's much rather devote his time and attention to "boyfriend functions" than sitting in the car waiting for me to finish my errands. As I ran in to one more store, I told him that there's a book in my purse that he can look at if he gets bored waiting. (No, I don't know why I wasn't taking my purse into the store with me). Bitterly and sarcastically, he says "Is it about a man who is hijacked from his true calling and passioned and forced instead to carry out menial tasks that are not only beneath him but also that he's not even very good at?" I looked in my purse, saw the Michelangelo book, handed it to him, and said "Yes it is!"

You know that Monty Python sketch where they're making an art house movie
with the two characters standing in a garbage dump, holding a cabbage, and
saying how they love each other? The Royal Tennenbaums reminds me of that.

The Master by Colm Toibin

It's a fictional biography of Henry James, which sounds promising, but the
book itself doesn't do much. It extrapolates from what's known about
James's life to tell anecdotes about his day-to-day thoughts and life, but
it doesn't really seem to have much point. Which I guess is perfectly
valid - why should our lives have to have a point? - but it was a bit
disappointing. Perfectly readable, but it could have been better.

I got to interact with a baby today, which is unusual for me since I don't
know any babies socially. One thing I noticed is that the baby would often
stare at people who were doing the most innocuous things, like eating or
chatting or walking around. While I was in a large group and there was
always at least one, often more, people interacting directly with the baby,
he would often stop and stare at other, unrelated goings-on.

I have a theory about this. I think the baby is used to people looking at
him and making faces and saying "Hiiiiiii!" in that high-pitched voice
everyone uses to talk to babies. I think he stares at other things to see
what the grown-ups do when there's no baby around. This must be how kids
learn how life works, otherwise all everyone would know how to do is stare
people in the face and say "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"

I know that when you have several utensils at your place setting, you work
from the outside in. But when there are some utensils above your plate,
lying parallel to the edge of the table, are those ones intended to be used
first or last? I knew all this once and I've totally forgotten!

Lately I have been having this recurring dream where I am a
transcriptionist. It's strange, because this dream feels exactly like a
warning or informational dream, like it's trying to tell me something, and I
can't figure out what it's trying to tell me. Nothing much happens, I just
am a transcriptionist - that's my job. Usually it's obvious to me what a
dream is trying to tell me, but this one I can't tell.