The Witching Well

One of the things I’ve always envied LiveJournal users is those fun little mood tags they have. So I decided to try a WP plugin I came across (My MooMus) that mimics it. But something seems to be wonky with the way it picks its path to the images. So now I have mood tags with broken image links.

Addendum 1 May: While I’m waiting for the developer (who is mondo responsive and gets big points for it) to figure out a fix, I’ve resorted to creating a temporary directory where the silly thing expects the images to be and uploaded a duplicate set. So it works now, but it’s definitely a duct tape job.

Mood: frustrated

Sometimes the world is a very funny place indeed. Last night, Andy and I were in the grocery store, and hapened to run into a neighbor. Not unusual, right?

Well, Dave was there because he was playing the role of too-good-to-be-true landlord. He owns a house, right next door to his florist business, at the other end of town, and he rents out the apartments in it. One of his tenants, who doesn’t own a car, needed a ride to the store, so Dave was kind enough to drive him.

That tenant? An old friend of ours from when Andy used to work at Emerson College. We’d known he’d moved to Salem, but we hadn’t had a chance to call him and get together.

So we got to have a really good laugh about coincidences, and then we got to go out for beer with Chad after we all took our groceries home.

Mood: surprised

Try Karla’s Wheel of Blogging! It’s the same one Karla uses in Home on the Strange.

Am I now obliged to write a 100-word Doctor Who fanfic? ‘Cause that’s more temptation than I need right now, and my novel is going slow enough as it is.

Big agro business is pushing to allow candy made with substitute fats instead of cocoa butter to be labelled “chocolate.” Right now, it would have to be labelled “chocolate flavored.” You can see where this would be good for the corporations that grow the sources of those substitute fats nd bad for the taste of chocolate in the US. And of course, they’ve been keeping it quiet.

Public comment on the FDA docket item expires on April 25. Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate has detailed instructions on how you can make your voice heard on the issue.

Via Making Light.

One of the coolest things about the internet is the possibility of stumbing across something fun that you might never have encountered in real life.

This morning, I’ve been exploring Middle Eastern pop music. Mainly Egyptian, Lebanese, and Turkish. I’m not usually one to fall for the pretty-boy pop icon type, but I’ve become rather enamored of Tarkan. I think I’ve listened to Ölürüm Sana eight or ten times in the last six hours, and it’s not getting old. His signature song, Şımarık, is also quite appealing.

I am, and always have been, in favor of gun control. My grandfather was a cop. Having a licensing system in place is simply a good idea. No one should be allowed to buy a gun who can’t prove that s/he knows how to handle it properly. Keep it clean. Store it safely. Use it with a minimum amount of competence. You know, to prevent tragic accidents.

My grandfather was also a hunter. I saw his guns all the time. They were safely locked up in a gun cabinet, which was never opened in my presence. This was a very good thing indeed.

Would better gun control have prevented what happened at Virginia Tech? I don’t know. I suspect that Cho Seung-Hui would have found another means to play out his mad revenge scheme if he couldn’t buy those handguns. The truly determined usually do.

Here’s the unpleasant truth: we will never be completely safe. It’s simply not possible. There are violent crazy people out there in the world who do terrible things to others. And if they’re crazy enough, nothing and no one is going to stop them. This is the reality of human society. Sad but true.

Outgoing SFWA VP Howard Hendrix calls writers who put their work up on the internet for free “webscabs.” Obviously, the man doesn’t know what a scab really is. But then, I’m guessing he doesn’t have to deal with a whole lot of labor relations problems up there in his scenic mountain home in the Sierra Nevadas.

I think it’s rather telling that I’ve never even heard of Dr. Hendrix.

On the other hand, I have heard of Nick Mamatas, Jim Macdonald, John Scalzi, Martha Wells, and lots of other authors whom he has just tarred with that outrageous and insulting brush.

The internet being what it is, the best and most colorful quote from Dr. Hendrix’s amazingly luddite rant has already become a T-shirt slogan.

Claire Rushden is transitioning M-to-F. She and her wife, Annie, are blogging about their life as trans couple. It’s beautiful. Go and read: Gardens in Bloom — an untraditional love story.

Kurt Vonnegut was 84 years old. I read Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle in junior high school and was completely blown away. A grand master if there ever was one. And one with a sense of humor, too. How many other SF authors have made cameo appearances in comedy films?

A little closer to home — right next door, in fact — our neighborhood lost a family member this week, too. Frannie Goodhue was a driving force in the local Girl Scouts council for who knows how many years. But more important to me was the fact that she was a kind-hearted, kid-loving neighbor who had watched me grow up. My brother and I ran wild through her yard when we were little. Her son parked his classic car in our garage for years. She came to my wedding. Later today, I’m going to her memorial service.

Our neighborhood isn’t as close-knit as it was when I was a kid, but the folks who have been around for a few years still look out for each other. Put out each others’ trash cans. Shovel each others’ walks. Call to check in on the elderly when there’s a storm coming. Yeah, there’s also an undercurrent of busy-bodiness that you can’t really avoid, but the gossip is usually sympathetic at least. I missed that when I was living in Boston.

The Ruanes. The Hayses. The Engs. The Goodhues. That neighborhood lingers, but it’s fading. The older generation is dying off. Houses are being sold. The list of long-term residents gets shorter and shorter. The community is splintering. Sure, some of the new folks are making connections, but most aren’t. Modern life is too busy, I guess. It’s a sad thing, when you don’t know who your neighbors are.