Off the Cliff

I have slain the monster, which is the application to have the assessment of my house reconsidered. I filled out the application and listed the reasons I thought they were batshit to think anyone would pay 418,000 for my crappy fixer-upper ('the addition on the back was added by the previous owner and is currently pulling away from the house, causing plaster cracks and subsidance; it is also falling down because the bricks are buckling. Cost to replace estimated as minimum 20,000.') I'm sure it won't move them a whit, but anyway-- I did it.
( How I spent my new freedom )

I had a lovely time in New York, but perhaps the thing that stays with me most vividly is my last night there.
( Cut for RL & poetry natter and subsequent 12 Kingdoms consideration )

Have been in NY. Am home. Am reasonably happy with both these facts.

I will confess- I have a vulgar streak that rejoices in the possession of LOTS. I like having LOTS. Of certain things, because LOTS of clothes and LOTS of food gives me vague anxiety about managing the use of same. But one (almost) untrammelled joy is having LOTS of manga. It isn't entirely the expectation of reading them either, because that can be problematic. (Which is another category of twitch: my quest for a good reading lamp is up there with my quest for waterproof winter boots. You get them in Heaven. Or here, if prepared to shell out $300.) It's just the sheer volume of manga that glads my heart. Promising manga, I mean: my heart wouldn't be gladdened by a complete run of Initial D or Rayearth.

So, two runs through Book-off and a rummage through paleaswater's castoffs and I have LOTS of manga, including some truly incomprehensible Ima Ichiko, some pretty but pointless shoujo and the first volume of A Cruel God Reigns. Which means I have to read the thing now. Not looking forward to it: the protagonist has a wobbly mouth. True you find out in the first three pages that he's tried to off his stepfather, and find out not much later why, but I can't see this turning into the classic everyone seems to think it is. Wobbly Hagio Moto heroes annoy me: and this one wobbles literally (and comically) at the funeral, first listing to one side and being straightened up by his half-brother, and then listing to the other. I don't expect the unconscious amusement to continue though.

I also have LOTS of Twelve Kingdoms. But that I'll discuss another time because right now I need to get some sleep after rising at 5 am and spending twelve and a half hours on a train.

(Someone is playing a mazurka on an erhu. Perhaps I'm hallucinating and it's just a lively Chinese tune.)
( Report )

Only two things to say about this whole ungodly mess.
( And not too loud )

To express my utmost agreement with petronia:

"What a writer wants is for people to tell other people, intelligently or at the very least enthusiastically and at length, why those other people should read the writer's stories: to wit, because they are awesome. In other words, what a writer wants is a good review so they can hem and haw in a bashful fashion and spend the rest of the evening privately glowing in a corner."

That's it, that's all of it, and thank god someone with fandom credibility said it.

I even agree with this part:

"So I grew up with the conviction that I know better than everyone else, no one can solve my problems except me, and furthermore my problems are no one else's business. In other words, I don't really think your concrit does me any good"--

--though in fact there are one or two people whose comments I find immensely useful: not because I think them better writers than I (one of them isn't even a writer) but because their insight into whichever series and their ear for tone and voice are better than mine.

(Though to give my two cents on the discussion debate: I wouldn't want to join in on a bunch of people discussing my fic together as readers of same. True I'm also a reader of my fic, but I have special inside knowledge on account of being the one who wrote it, so it's necessarily going to look different to me than to them. Let the readers discuss. If they miss the point by a country mile- as 90% of Eroica fans miss the point of my Eroica fics- then all they do is demonstrate what idiots they are. If they use a faux-dispassionate analytical style while missing the point, they demonstrate it twice.)

( And on the personal front )

Variable weather scrambles the head, yes. Monday was perfect July- hot, sunny, DRY. Tuesday was supposed to be 37 and thunderous, and instead was 24 and rainy, with grey humid air like a blanket. Turned on the AC just because the house was unbreathably stuffy. At which temperatures plunged and gave us duvet weather Wednesday, grey cold scattered rain that cleared into a rational cool evening and a decent summer day today: warm in the sun and cool in the shade. Having gone through three seasons in four days, and not been able to wake up on the last of them, any sense of 'now' I might have is completely foutu. This is not helped by reading Gene Wolfe's There Are Doors and an Ima Ichiko where no-one seems to be who they say they are.
( Black water )

The heat began on Sunday, but more than three hot days in a row registers with me as 'always.' It's always been hot. But even though everyone's saying they've never known a year as hot as this, I can't agree. It's 33 and 34 every day and the humidex is unspeakable; but I distinctly recall late-80s summers of day after day of 37 and 38 with unspeakable humidexes, and the bodily reaction of Red Alert! Red Alert! get into AC now. This weather is still on the bearable side during the day. The nights... well, the nights suck. But this is still the first night I may keep the AC on straight through, cause I've been turning it off once the bedroom cools. (Then there was the summer of '94 in Tokyo which set a record for number of 'tropical nights', which is something hideous like nights that don't go below 28C/ 82F. I had my dorai kiipu and never went anywhere in the evening after work for nearly two months because bicycling was simply out of the question.)
( Nonetheless brainmelt currently exists, with interesting results )

I learned it from my flist, like many other people, because I look at that before I look at the Globe. Ahh, I thought in early-morning fuzziness, bombs in London. Again. When was it...? 1975, thirty years ago. In London, riding on a bus, passing the usual street scene of cordoned-off area and shattered glass and bobbies. My friend pointed to a couple of quiet men standing about doing nothing. 'Plainclothes police,' she said with certainty, even though she'd left England when she was five. I'm sure she was right. Bombs in London. Really, what were they thinking of? London's had sixty-five years of bombs and isn't likely to be rattled by a few more. As I then discovered, incandescens' FL was saying much the same thing.

And just a bit amused, in a been-there fashion, about the people worrying over friends who live nowhere near London. When Kobe was flattened my sister called me in Tokyo to see if I was OK. 'But Suze, you *know* Kobe's three *hours* from Tokyo on the *Shinkansen*. Our windows didn't even rattle.' 'Yes I know but.' (She didn't call after the sarin attack in the subway three months later. 'But you're not on the Hibiya line.')

Have been wrestling with the intricacies of Word, which refused for the longest time to display bolding or underling in my documents. Help was no help. Change is vexatious to the soul, yes.
( natter )

Oh come on, you great sodding lump. Just finish the damned translation. Seventeen more pages of dialogue you could do in your sleep. Do it. Do it. Do it.
( And Max said No. )

There are no Japanese Kenshin tapes to be had in the rental shops of Toronto. There aren't even Chinese pirates unless you order them. So I went to The Beguiling (situated dangerously close to my house) to price individual import DVDs. They were out of Kyoto arc eps, naturally. But they did have the boxed set. And as I hesitated, calculating that I could view the whole arc for a mere $25 at zip.ca, there came to me the hideous tones of the dub Hiko talking about the Ahmah-KAkeROO-ri-yoo(hoo)-No-Hirameki. I can almost live with Ki-o-to, though it still makes my skin crawl. But one damned riyoo-sen after another has broken my spirit. (Insult to injury, it's the dragon ryuu.) I bought the bloody set. Somebody owes me, is what I say.

The transit strike is a go. And Squidlet summarizes the WHO report under the accurate cut-tag We're ALL GONNA DIE!! A pandemic of avian flu is inevitable. It hits not only the very young and the very old but the adults in their prime right in the middle. And it's definitely going to happen.
( I can't tell you what a relief this is )

On another note, I'm a touch bemused by these people writing Stigma fic. I wonder how many of them have actually read the thing in Japanese. Because the last thing I feel the need of is Stigma fic of any description. What's there is perfect. Anything further is just... surplus to requirement. And not perfect, of course. But what I want, rather badly, is to be able to translate it again, only better than before; and that I can't do.

( memeage )

The colours are all different because lj erased my customizations once again. Intending to buy me some nice bath stuff I wound up instead paying three times as much for various arthritis creams. I got the Traditional Formula one because it had pug-nosed Chinese dragons on the box. Neither it nor the topical glucosamine one worked at all, of course. Then I bought a toaster oven, thinking I could once again have toast, not to mention fish sticks. The door is broken and I must take it back. Thus the small betrayals of the day.
( adventures in mangaland )

Note to me: do not watch Hellsing with a fever.

Also: the really down side of staying home sick is the stunningly massive number of phone calls. Half are telemarketers wanting to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Johnson, a phrase that reduces me to foaming fury. Half are people from work who weren't listening yesterday when I said Don't call me to work for you tomorrow I'm sick. This /would/ reduce me to foaming fury if I wasn't used by now to working with narcissists.

Also: if there's a sillier point to rant and flame about than 'It's Alucard you dumb fuxx!!' 'No it's Arucard!!!', then I have not met it. People who have ranted on this point will remember the fact ten years hence and die a thousand deaths.

No sooner does all the snow melt away than more snow falls. Yes dear, it's called 'winter.' But even Mrs. Professor of Islamic Culture up the street, who must be an easy 20 years younger than me, says she aches from shoveling; and so do I.
( Gankutsu-ou, cut for those who might view it some day )

Mind you, if the Count turns out to be someone like Deth from the RiddleMaster trilogy, I shall be pleased as well. But I'm not holding my breath on that one. The Count too may have altruistic motives for what he's doing but ultimately one must assume it's personal. It's the Count of Monte Cristo, after all.

This is definitely One of Those Fricked-up Winters. Freezing rain for the third time inside a month, and not even halfway through January yet. (Freezing rain was a March hazard under the old dispensation, but now who knows?) Followed by rain-rain all day. Getting to work was nasty for the block and a half I walked before hailing a cab: the trip cost me an hour of my usual rate, but worth it not to break or strain something. Leaving was better if only because the ice was gone, but the rain was torrential and accompanied by thunder and sheet lightning. I avoid being out when there's lightning around, yes even in the city. I just don't feel safe. Summer storms one can usually gauge the likely duration of, but the rare winter ones have no rules. So I decided to suck it up and take the subway for one whole stop, which qualifies as laziness or luxury depending on circs.
( Upon which my luck turned around completely )