Random

[flemmings]

I love to sneer at other translators' idiocies because it makes me feel better about my own gaffes.

Three days off! I have three days off! In a row! Maybe now I can kick this cold that's taken away my hearing, my smelling and my sense of taste.

Reflects that even if I was tempted to read Bleach the fact that everyone and their sister-in-law is reading Bleach and nattering about it would put me off. It's like swimming pools- too many people in it means you can't do anything yourself. Except maybe chain-step laps where you have to keep your pace the same as everyone else's.

There's also the problem of the reverse-recommendation: If So-and-so likes this it must suck. And even if it doesn't suck there's still the problem of liking something So-and-so does. I occasionally feel most put out that someone like So-and-so has the nerve to like something good and thus cast doubts on whether it's as good as I think it is. Ohh la vache.

I started to do that guilt meme from mikeneko but ran into problems. The first one is that I just don't feel guilty about stuff I like. Must be one of those things that happens with age. I used to, but I don't any more. Yes, I like Neil Diamond. No, I don't feel guilty about that. *Now*.

Also I'm not-a-watcher. There goes the celebrities and A/V section. Also I read slowly and time's winged chariot is drawing near. There's a good reason why I read whatever I do, though at one point I vaguely recall I spent my time rereading kids' books I'd read a million times vefore.

Thus my guilty pleasures are mostly confined to double crostics- absolute indefensible time wasters- and Second Cup sugar cookies.

Second cup, the Canuck chain of coffee shops that Starbucks always builds its outlets across the street from- yes, OK, got it?- has seasonal sugar cookies with hard frosting. I can't resist them. Well, I can resist when the cookies are hard but when they're soft and the frosting *cracks* as you bite into it... ahh. Hallowe'en, autumn leaves, Christmas, Valentine's, St Patricks, easter bunnies, spring flowers: and then they just have sun cookies or whatever. Soccer balls in World Cup years. It's like the seasonal markers I knew in Japan: plum blossoms, cherry, wisteria, iris, hydrangea, and then it was rainy season. I mark the year's passing in Second Cup sugar cookies.

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[flemmings.livejournal.com]

A form of crossword. You have a list of clues. When entered into the boxes the letters of the answers form a quote from some book. (Obviously the words read horizontally only, not down like an ordinary crossword.) The first letters of the clues, read downwards, gives you the author and title of the book.

Teaches you a lot about the phonic structure of English words, and even more about the deadly sameness of modern prose style. The only time I'm badly thrown is when the quote is from an 18th century writer or a poem.