The Round Corner

Yearly rebaptism by ice and salt accomplished. The sea high, rolling moderately-sized breakers up onto the sand in the tiny bay between the headland and the harbour. A current dragging southeast along the shoreline, the water so murky you cannot see your feet. The smell of weed, the waft of old fish from the harbour, the rattle of a train coming into the station over the viaduct. The cringing moment before jumping headlong into a wave and the shock of cold as it breaks over your head.

More people on the beach than usual. Often it's all but deserted bar dog-walkers. Today Loreto girls (I was ever that young?) getting their too-long skirts wet in the surf, Polish families, a handful of Igbo women in flower-printed wraps, Irish people turning the traditional summer shade of Peeling Tomato: I left my kit beside a trio of young sunbathing possibly-Albanians (I am good with identifying foreign language groups but not that confident) and splashed off into the water for twenty minutes (roughly). I am all tingly and sleepy now, and decided to skip on going to town in favour of being a coffee shop yuppie - spending money I don't have in order to see if I can get more work done. Where work = writing a funding report in order to get a pathetically tiny amount of money. Still. Money.

Here's hoping this brief summer lasts a little longer.

This entry was originally posted at http://hawkwing-lb.dreamwidth.org/478752.html. There are comments there. Comment where you like.

Yesterday waa a fine day. I got up too early, to be driven to the airport by lillypond, a/k/a my sister. The flights to Detroit were uneventful, other than being about 40 minutes late getting into DTW. I was able to start digging in to revising the Going to Extremes outline on the plane, plus answering a ton of email. Also had several pleasant conversations with various fellow travelers.

Arriving at World Steam Expo was an interesting experience. It's been years since I walked into a Con cold, not knowing anyone or anything. (I think I know maybe two or three people here.) So once I got settled, I hung out in the lobby and talked to various folks. Eventually I fell in with low persons (a/k/a The League of S.T.E.A.M.), who led me into bad ways (a/k/a Abney Park). Strong drink was consumed, and gutter language was used. A few regrettable incidents may have occurred. I went to bed highly entertained around 2 am, which is the latest I've stayed up in forever.

Plus as a special bonus, I ran into @howardtayler, who in addition to being a brilliant cartoonist and storyteller, is also well on his way to becoming one of my favorite people anywhere, ever.

My schedule today consists of a massage. Oh, how shall I cram it all in?

See some, all or none of you around this joint.

Your Friday moment of zen.



the_child about age 9, 2006. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Brief reviews of several short stories, including my own "'Hello,' said the Gun"

Writing Across Gender — A very interesting piece about gender, writers and fiction. Snurched from this blog post by beth_bernobich, who has some insightful comments on the topic.

Calvin and Hobbes on creativity and inspiration — Heh.

Cars That Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel

Vintage ice cream trucks

Africa and Australasia to share Square Kilometre Array — That's a mighty big kilometer.

Where did dogs come from? It turns out we don't really know

Carbon in rocks from Mars comes from volcanoes, not life — Nearby minerals confirm a high-temperature origin deep within the planet.

Accusations that climate science is money-driven reveal ignorance of how science is done — The government, the argument goes, is paying scientists specifically to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is the major culprit in recent climate change, and the money available to do so is exploding. Although the argument displays a profound misunderstanding of how science and science funding work, it's just not going away. Huh. Ignorance. Among science denialists. Inconceivable.

Black Voters Evolving On Marriage Equality — Ta-Nehisi Coates on the intersection of race and gay issues. I'd really like to have lunch with this guy some day.

CNN host probes Tony Perkins: ‘Why do homosexuals bother you so much?’ — Read this. The intellectual and moral bankruptcy of Perkins' illogical response neatly reflects the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the conservative anti-gay crusade as a whole. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

The Proposed Auction of Ronald Reagan's Blood Isn't Surprising — And lo, Republican hagiography becomes literalized. (Via threeoutside.)

?otd: Are you a little teapot, short and stout?

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5/25/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (Going to Extremes proposal)
Body movement: n/a (airport walking to come)
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate; Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

Þæt, as they say, wæs god concert. We had great seats, the pyrotechnics were gorgeous--and hot*--and the set list was very nice, even if I would rather have heard "Rosenrot" than "Bück Dich." We had to miss the last encore to get home to the babysitter--the opening whistle of "Engel" chased us into the parking lot, and I'm not sure what they played next. I got to see "Haifisch," though, which I love unreasonably.

They played "Ohne Dich" and it was quite nice, but I'm afraid Laibach did to that song what Johnny Cash did to "Hurt." They'll never top that cover.

That's another concert off my life list. Having seen Leonard Cohen and Concrete Blonde, and given up on Siouxsie or the Creatures, the list is getting short. It would be nice to see Laibach. The rest would need a time machine.



* Not unlike many members of the band.**

** But Till, honey, the reason you can't get laid in Germany is because German women understand your lyrics.

• Thu, 12:25: RT @sarahreesbrenna: @booksmugglers 1 thing I'd really like is for people to stop condemning books because they use a trope, or the writ ...
• Thu, 12:26: RT @automathic: Also, sexual objectification ≠ access to sexual freedom on your own terms. Anyone who thinks the former is a means to th ...
• Thu, 12:27: Lovely lunchtime writing in the sun, using my shoes as a paperweight.
• Thu, 16:02: RT @_staceymitchell: BBC News - Trefael Stone reveals stone age burial chamber http://t.co/mJnG4SK6
• Thu, 16:19: RT @nkjemisin: This is an amazing blog, but I especially like this article on Venetian mask culture: http://t.co/zZ0eIiTK #worldbuilding
• Fri, 07:56: RT @rob_haines: Woop... woop... woop... Slinky on a Treadmill: http://t.co/d8Q6kMxc (and yes, my evil alter-ego may have accidentally tw ...
• Fri, 07:57: Good morning Twitterverse. It's a lovely sunny day here. I'm already planning lunch in the sunshine.
• Fri, 08:11: Those who do not learn from history...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18159752
• Fri, 08:24: RT @tommydonbavand: Happy Towel Day, you hoopy froods! http://t.co/rcol69xu #towelday #fb
• Fri, 08:41: Dear Sandwich Van - a pork and apple sauce sandwich without stuffing does not an awesomesauce sandwich make.

( Read more... )

mitchell_hart, the creator of Inkscrawl (which is now in the capable hands of rose_lemberg and samhenderson), is launching a new poetry zine



Submissions guidelines here

I replied, in my previous comment thread, to a comment, and then realized that I had more - I know this will come as a surprise to you all - to say.

One of the hallmarks of an ASD child and his general speech is that ASD children can talk non-stop for hours about the topics which interest them. Or obsess them. From an outsider's perspective, it's often hard to separate the two.

They frequently cannot talk about anything else. When my oldest was in elementary school, I could ask him about his school day, but by the time he crossed the threshold and entered the house, the last thing he wanted to talk about was school. At all. I therefore got a blank stare, when he was younger, or "it was fine" when he was older. That was the extent of the information I was given. For this reason, among others, I was in steady contact with his teachers in the early years.

My oldest was that variety of Aspergers which is precociously verbal. He taught himself to read in order to play The Incredible Machine and Diablo. He couldn't stand to wait for us to read things to him, in the first case (all of the level goals were of course in words), or wait for me to tell him what items the monsters had dropped, in the second.

He could talk about Diablo or the incredible machine for days. So I played the Incredible Machine and Diablo. We played Diablo together on the home network. I played video games before he was born, and after, so we had an interest in common.

The interest in common was very helpful in turning the exposition or monologue into a dialogue, because he wanted to talk about the things that interested him.

To a lesser extent, all children are like this. They want to be heard. ASD, non-ASD, they want to be heard. ASD children are developmentally much younger than normative children, and their social skills are therefore several years behind the curve. When other children are engaging in conversation, the ASD child will be engaging in monologue, because he is arrested at the 'want to be heard' level for far longer than the other children.

I was asked, by the parent of a five year old ASD boy, what I'd done to cause my nine year old son to converse. The prevailing thought is that it is neither healthy nor normal to allow an ASD child to monologue, and if the child is doing this, he must be stopped.

I'm afraid I disagree with this.

( I'm afraid I disagree with this. )

Books 2012: 79-82


79. Drew Karpyshyn, Mass Effect: Revelation. (Orbit, 2007.)

This is a bad book. Tepidly written and vacuously plotted, with a collection of tedious clichés passing for characterisation, the only reason it pulls together into a book-like shape at all is because the Mass Effect setting possesses a certain operatic charm. Not recommended.


80. John Jackson Miller & Mac Walters, Mass Effect: Redemption. (Dark Horse, 2010.) Art by Omar Francia, Michael Atiyeh, & Daryl Mandryk.

If Mass Effect: Revelation is a bad book, Redemption is a comic of very little redeeming value. Shallowly plotted, with art that, however vibrantly colourful, dwells lingeringly on the objectified female form, it's got very little to recommend it apart from a couple of half-decent one-liners.


nonfiction

81. Brit Mandelo, WE WUZ PUSHED: On Joanna Russ and radical truth-telling. (Aqueduct Press, 2012.)

A very short (~70 pages) discussion of what Mandelo contends is the major theme of Russ's career: telling the truth in a radical fashion. It's a joy to read. (Although since the problem of telling the truth begs the question of to whom you tell it, I'm sufficiently a product of academia that I'd've liked to see a discussion of Russ's audience, as well). If Russ is fundamentally concerned with demystification, Mandelo does a pretty bang-up job of demystifying Russ. Recommended for anyone who enjoys fluent criticism.


82. Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science. (Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, 1999.)

I confess, I skimmed the last three chapters. Epistemology is not my favouritest thing. And since I knew nothing about Bruno to begin with, I do not know if this book is any good. It is certainly not a good entry point for the history of Renaissance science. (I know, I know. I should read more in my area. But mind like magpie. Sez: Want shinier history!)

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On a completely diferent topic, I believe I am developing body image issues. (More of them than I used to have, anyway.) This is an annoying complication in my self-image.

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