Off the Cliff

1. Snow is for the young. It makes my feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees scream, and for some reason gives me cramps on the inside of my thighs the way nothing has done since riding a horse when I was 11. And I walked in it all today and all yesterday, and will be walking in it for quite some time to come. The only good thing about snow is being able to shovel it away. And I can't do that because a very little careful cleaning makes my neck nerves twinge warningly. So I shall be sliding over many people's churned-up slush as well.

2. The BBC Sherlock is marvellous for taking me Elsewhere. I have no idea why this should be so. I'm a little discomfited that it's also made the original impossible to read. Maybe the taste for Holmes will come back when the taste of Cumberbatch has left my brain.
( Read more... )

First 'enough snow for boots' yesterday, though roads were clear enough to bike by afternoon. And did, over to The Mall, just to have the experience of what malls are like the weekend before Christmas. Well no-- because two of our parents gave me a very generous gift card for Winners and I need flannel pants to sleep in. Got two pairs, a small present for next door, and have a balance on the card.

Otherwise I'd have bought one of those foam rollers both mvrdrk and my acupuncturist recommend for tight shoulders and legs: but 6 inch diameter looked awfully *big* to roll around on, and I intend to see if there are smaller, as there certainly are cheaper. (When I looked for foam rollers last summer at Walmart, with no idea what they were, I came away with one of those foam swimming tubes for kids. Which is still uncomfortable to roll on, besides not rolling that well. And if you expect me to balance myself on my elbow and forearm to use it, as per the photo in the first link, forget it. My arms don't do that stuff.)
( Cut for brain melt )

Finished Un Lun Dun which was nice enough in an 'I saw what you did there' way; and I mean, am glad he did do it, but there should be more at the end of a door stopper book than just that. At least it's not (quite) the downer Perdido was. I feel like I've read the 21st century version of The Phantom Tollbooth, and it's a nastier world than Norton and Feiffer's.

Otherwise will note two suspiciously thorough fires in the neighbourhood in the last three days, within 150 ft of each other (something less than 30 m). Not reassuring at all.

The Japan Foundation was having their usual free films back at the old Bloor Cinema which has been taken over and renovated by an outfit that screens documentaries solely. Is why last year's films were at some inconvenient locale. The Japan Foundation's film nights have been cut to two, alas, but they still show three films. However, not up for a double bill, on Sunday I skipped the one about airlines and went to the one about the little village that puts on an amateur kabuki show every year (or every two years, if you're the real little village.) The film's called Someday in English, on account of them assuming American audiences would no more go see 'A Record of the Disturbances at Big Deer Village' than they'd buy a book called 'The Rivers of London.'

It was lots of fun, though I find the renovated Bloor now has much narrower seats, and I *think* has lost some side space downstairs. But venue apart, I was assailed by a particular gaijin moment in the film.
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Last night's film was Villon's Wife, and I lasted fifteen minutes. I was in the balcony, which has the old wide seats, and unlike the floor on Sunday night it was almost full, with lots of friends meeting each other, and groups of Japanese chatting together, and a happy theatre ambience all round. The film is set just post-war, in the vanished Tokyo one rarely sees, and Matsu Takako is gorgeous (she was in Someday-- her picture's in that first link) and listening to the levels of Japanese the actors use is most instructive. But there's only so much I can take of "a long-suffering woman's relationship with her brilliant but self-destructive writer husband in postwar Tokyo." Dazai Osamu wrote some amazing stuff but oh em gee was he a 'ditch him, dear, he ain't worth it' dweeb.

Switch to old version and stay switched, LJ.

A vague malaise has been dragging at me all week, characterized only by tiredness and long sleeps. The gargling razorblades sensation in the throat might only be dryness: running the humidifier helped greatly last night. The aches in the shoulders might be bad sleeping posture or hefting lumpenkinder; two acupuncture sessions has helped greatly with those. The wanhope and blahs is characteristic of December in these latter days; the last time I was happy in December was 2003, nearly a decade ago.

The sum of this, though, is that I had to give away half a shift today, which is a good chunk of money. And *that* hurts.
( Meanwhile, in 'Rabbit, Run' )

Especially when one has left one's current reading at work. Replacement reading is Tananarive Due's Blood Colony or Natsuo Kirino's Real World, both of which are utter downers-- though I hadn't realized Blood Colony is third in a series.

Sinuses hurt, neck tendons hurt, can't wake up in the morning: a normal November. Everyone else is sick and calls me in to work for them, which is money, at least, but also never enough sleep. The lovely warm(ish) weather continues, at a cost of raging leaf mould everywhere; in two days' time it'll be wintry but at least I might wake up. I have not replaced my computer battery or bought the new lenses I need or got a replacement bulb for the one that periodically turns itself off (maybe this is what those super-saver twisty bulbs do when they get old? The ones that don't explode in a shower of mercury, I mean.) And so we stagger down to the end of the year.

Ah hah. So the 'Aoyama' incense petronia bought for me at that upscale botique at the island airport is supposed to smell like old houses in Aoyama. Taishou Aoyama, then-- woodsmoke and sandalwood-- because Aoyama doesn't smell like that now. Equally, when burning the incense does smell like old temples; in its box it smells of someone else's notion of White Linen.

(BTW, you can say what you like, but Chanel no.5 doesn't smell the same now as it did in the 60s.)

Down to having real live people in my house!! petronia left Friday morning, incandescens arrived, bearing gifts, (late) Friday evening, in the face of a hurricane westwind. Has rained ever since and is about to rain more. Ahh the weather of the world is not what it was.

But Zan, your beautiful dragon card in its beautiful gold envelope arrived Friday as well. Thank you so much! And hang in-- things do get better.

I went to the ears nose and throat specialist about my swollen eustachian tubes and the chronic blockage therefrom. Specialist says my ears, like my hearing, are just fine. Swelling comes from grinding of teeth at night. Night guard is not doing its duty. Oh woe is me.
( Cut for reading natter )

"She only says 'Don't throw anything out because you never know when it will come in handy.'"

So I rescued a round white table from the gomi, and as it wouldn't fit through the front door I installed it on the porch, where I already have two comfy chairs (or comfy when you've put the elegant cushions I also rescued from the gomi on them. Cushions go back in afterwards because of Cats. Who will pee on them or shed on them or infest them with fleas.) Then I found a highbacked wooden chair, a treasure, and put that at the table. And now I have a comfy parlour-porch, except that the overhead light will only take 60 watt bulbs and it's dark early these days. No problem. There's that oil lamp I had back in the 80s; rescue it from the basement and buy some scented oil and oh how elegant my dusky meals will be this autumn.

Except I put it out on the Front Lawn Dollar Store some time back and now I don't have it any more.
( Equally )

Because I am an aesthete at heart, I wanted to read Point of Knives in the grey autumnal weather that best suits Astreiant, but I missed that window of opportunity (last weekend, basically) and thus began it in this week's mug. Finished it tonight, on a cool blue evening after relentless rain all day. *So* nice to be back in that city among those people, even for the short space of a novella. There's a new one next year, which is reason enough to keep on breathing.

Here is the Locus review of Point of Hopes and the Points series, to have it handy. I might write more but allergies are making me feel like I haven't slept in three days, so I go to sleep.

Dear god it is finally OVER. Over, finished, through. I shall never chop another piece of fruit in my life.

And I have the next six days off, in which I shall endeavour to forget about work entirely. I don't want to say 'I am going to read myself silly' or anything, because then forces will conspire to stop me. But meum est propositum to crawl into a bunch of good books and pull their covers over my head.

On August 27 1993 a typhoon hit Tokyo directly. I was out in it, watching the rain blow sideways, because my Kyuushuu boss was unimpressed by Honshuu typhoons and saw no reason my students would stay at home on a night like that. (OTOH he cancelled all my kids' afternoon classes in Tsukishima because the venue was at the north end of that island in the Sumida, and he figured the mothers wouldn't let their darlings out for fear of them being blown away into the river.)

Tonight I was seized by a need for almonds a half hour before the super closed. (And duck eggs, because two of my dozen were bad and I am suddenly out of them. The super had duck eggs Sunday, but as it turned out, none today.) So I trotted out into the night, in my indoor sandals yet, noting the low black ragged clouds zapping along from the north. (Is dark at 8:30 now, a month from the solstice or-is-it-equinox?) That cold front moving in, and may it move fast. Well yes. But it came accompanied by monsoon rains that were flooding the gutters when I went to leave, so I waited for a lull and then swam merrily home, drenched to the skin, celebrating this 19th anniversary of the typhoon that hit Tokyo directly.

And I still don't have a rain icon.

Went to the farmers' market again and was informed by the presumed son of my Hutterite/Mennonite egg woman (his mother being ear-bent by some yuppie intent on discussing the uses of duck lard) that goose eggs are only available in the spring. Where Fiesta got them in July is a mystery, and I should like to know why ducks and quail, to say nothing of chicken, lay year round while geese are particular. But there we are.
( As for the ham )

It would not be a tragedy if I were unable to play online solitaire ever again. It would be a bloody nuisance. As it is, I'm unable to play online solitaire in Firefox, because FF decided this evening, suddenly without warning, that Java 6.33 was a security hazard, and refused to start any of my games. So I updated to 7, snarling: and FF crashed every time I tried to load a solitaire site. And then disabled the keyboard when I tried to google the problem. I reloaded FF, discovered that Java 7 crashing FF is a common occurrence, removed it and found an old version of 6.33 to download. (One that did not change my default browser or install toolbars.)

Firefox still crashes when I load my games, even with the old version.

How lucky I never removed IE from WinXP. I go to play Addiction Solitaire over there.

Good: finished Toujin Yashiki, Hatsu Akiko's strange Chinese tales set in NY and England (though the dragon king's daughter's pool isn't connected to her father's sea, so he doesn't come visiting. I think that's in another collection.) Pleasant resonant fluff, as Hatsu often is-- though maybe that's a gaijin's POV, and the very lack of there there is what one should prize about her works.

Bad: am finding Fly-by-night slow and uneasy-making, or possibly slow because uneasy-making. I have no guarantee that horrors will not abound in the present as they have in the past. But I can't stop reading. People who go to suspense and horror films invite this kind of experience, but I could never see what the fun of it is.
( Continuing )

Time was, July was a long undifferentiated tunnel of heat and sleep deprivation. One went from the rationality (usually) of June into a vortex universe with no markers, and came out somewhere in August, preferably to the Autumn Preview some time in the first ten days, with purpose and direction returned to the world, and no memory of the last five weeks. That went by the board in the cool summers of '08 and '09, when rationality never departed. (Much. July '08 melts into a memory of constant thunder.) Now the 36C weather brings mindlessness back again, and I can't remember mid-week what I did the previous weekend.

The latest bout of 36C disappeared some time Tuesday night. I looked out the window just after sunset to see clear sky above, but only a little to the south a cloud with lightning rippling through it. No thunder at all. I watched the show for a little, queasily, something I'd normally never do-- lightning, ugh-- but still can't see why people think storms are so cool.
( Summer doldrums )

The raccoons that graze the back yard plums and cherries at night, and snarl and chitter at whatever it is they snarl and chitter at, remind me of youkai. Ubiquitous, territorial, chronically hungry, and with a tendency to eat each other.

And now must wait another year until the next 100 Demons; or another however long until it's translated into Chinese. This was a very good volume with development where least expected but (me being me) most desired. I fancy even paleaswater will like the grandfather story in this one.
( Speaking of being hungry )

1. I can't complain of the heat. I could, after all, be somewhere without electricity. Nor can I complain of two early mornings in a row, given the hours other people have to get up at. Even so, my heat/ sleeplessness headache is none the better for it.

2. Happy beaver is noir in one other, very obvious, way. The hero is an obnoxious git even to his friends, and his friends still go on helping him in spite of it. I remember this puzzling me a lot in Dashiell Hammett's works as well. Demanding favours from people and never saying either thanks or sorry even when they get hurt helping you is not how one secures co-operation in my part of the world. Maybe there's some macho ethos at work that never got explained to me. I still find Aaronovitch's Peter the most likable of the current trio. His mum did good by him.
( Read more... )

Mh yeah, that 'OMG they passed Obamacare, this country is screwed, I'm moving to Canada!' thing was funny in its way. Do indeed come to the country where healthcare for everyone is taken straight out of your paycheque, dude. What you don't know can make your blood pressure skyrocket. But for long-standing historical reasons, it steams me just a titch. It confirms the suspicion that for many people, Canada is a place that exists solely for the convenience of Americans who don't like it at home. Actual conditions here are a closed book to them; as, no doubt, is the fact that we have a different currency. (Schadenfreude at least makes me very happy that stores here value the American buck at 90 cents Canadian and not 1.10, 1.20, or 1.50. Revenge is sweet.)
( June's genre reading )

bk1 has changed hands. Well, this happens. The new webface has pale unreadable fonts-- light blue, guys: who uses that?- and barely fits the highest resolution this monitor is capable of. I thought Japan was all about the hand-held platforms? But nope, they want one of those stretched monitor jobbies. Thus it takes forever to find out what they're calling my 'buy later' list now, and again, instead of the neat column bk1 had, it's a messy thing that requires scrolling back and forth to see all the buttons.

Well, fine. I succeed in ordering my new Hyakki Yakou anyway, squinting desperately the while.

The confirmation email arrives. It's mojibake. Their publishers' update emails are readable. Their 'you want these books!!' emails are readable. Their important emails are borked. Blah. How lucky I'm impoverished these day and not about to go on any Japanese spending sprees. But must the last state of the thing *always* be worse than the first?

Have finished Tiassa. This is not, repeat not, the signal to read The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, or The Viscount of Adrilankha. Well, maybe The Viscounta because I was punchdrunk when I read it last and remember nothing of what happened.
( Neighbourhood thieves )

I know we had no rain to speak of in May, but did we have to make up the deficit all in one day? With umbrella-twisting winds and floods in Union Station?
( May reading-- all fantasy all the time )

Through Taltos, Dragon, and Yendi in less than a week. Now started Jhereg, the original book of the series. Must have been confusing as hell to the readers-- all this backstory, all these people we don't know, all this history Brust doesn't go into. Man does believe in making his people work, or does at times.
( And in RL )

Today was a perfect July day. Pity it's only May. But sun and blue skies and warmth and a cool breeze, birds singing, gardeners gardening, and fireworks in the evening. Am probably slightly sunburned: I feel a bit odd and zonked.

The Minority Council was wonderful, a perfect holiday weekend book. Am so sad it's finished, and so sad I have to wait for the next one. I feel I should probably review the Vlad Taltos books in order to read his latest, but I'm not sure I want to hear Vlad's voice after two weeks of Michael's. I did read a little 1Q84 after lo these many weeks, and probably should press on with it. In the kind of summer we're looking to have, reading Japanese might be the last thing I want to do.