Some things.

[melannen]

1. I posted a tutorial on how to set up an OpenID account on Journalfen to getting_started, so if anyone has JF comments importd here that they'd like to eventually claim, they should mark it. (metafandom is still linking to the draft version of the tutorial, but hopefully that will change.)

/me officially washes her hands of S2 forever.

2. /me has sauntered vaugely downward into the #dw irc channel. Curse you, Opera, why did you make that so easy?

If previous experience with IRC stands, I will stay in channel for about a week, and then get behind and never go back. But hEll bot is adorable.

3. damned_colonial posted this meme:
Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.
...and I told myself that the next time somebody I read posted it, I would do it. So:

1. local politics: Once, when I was in grade school, I was stuck at my grandfather's house on a Sunday afternoon, and I couldn't find anything to read but the memoir of Tip O'Neill. This was basically my introduction to politics as something other than a spectator sport.
   
   Tip O'Neill famously said "All politics is local", and while it's kind of oversimplified, it's not a bad idea to live by. The easiest way to do change is to start small, where you live, and build. My father was involved in local politics, on-and-off; he once ran for a local Democratic party office, and he was on a local planning commitee, so I had a role model, too. I've always tried to keep abreast of what's going on in politics at the county level, but I've only in the past few years gotten anywhere near active: I'm currently working with BRIDGE, which is a local fair-housing and social-justice coalition that works with the Gamaliel Foundation to bring together local religious groups, nonprofits, and community groups to build political power and make the local government hear the voice of the people. I'm learning a lot, meeting wonderful people (all of whom are far older than me) and having a blast so far; mostly because not owning a car means I can duck out on the boring and difficult bits. *grin*
   
   Hopefully, I will post some here about what I do with them: I have a bunch of stuff queued, but then I always end up writing about fandom instead.(Also, they have a sucky, sucky web presence.)


2. regional soft drinks: This started because in southwestern Ohio, where my mother is from, they have Barq's Red Creme Soda, aka Redpop, which you cannot get on the East Coast, which is awesome. (Beware: in other regions, like Texas, Redpop is red-flavored rather than creme soda, and is not nearly as good.) So whenever I travel, I started keeping an eye out for sodas / pops / tonics that I had never seen at home. (I used to save the bottles, but had to pare down the junk a lot recently.)
   
   In Pennsylvania you can buy Cherikee Red, which is almost as good as Barq's red creme, but different. In the South, there is Cheerwine, which is like Dr. Pepper, only better. In Kentucky, you can get Ale-8, the hypercaffienated ginger ale of doom. There are a few places in the far West where you can still buy Kickapoo Joy Juice, which is yellowish and fizzy and has an outhouse on the label. Blenheim's, on the way to Myrtle Beach, will burn your taste buds off. Inka Kola is like nothing I have ever tasted. And nearly everywhere, if you know where to look, *somebody* is bottling a not-very-sweet actually-tastes-like-trees microbrew root beer or birch beer or blueberry tonic water. (Someday, I will get my hands on a can of Moxie. And then I will probably gag and spit it out.)
   
   Anyway, enough years of doing that, and I got to preferring my soda not-very-sweet, highly carbonated, and lacking corn syrup, so I'm spoiled for the mass-market stuff. And the trendy "independent" stuff like Jones is okay, but overpriced, overly clever, and nothing like the real thing.


3. Spike Jones! You may know Spike Jones And His City Slickers for their versions of "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" or "I'm Gettin' Nuttin' For Christmas", or possibly as the performers of "Der Fuhrer's Face." But I actually prefer his pop songs, which are equally silly. Frex: My Old Flame, Clink, Clink, Another Drink. Spike Jones was basically the Jonathan Coulton and viral YouTube covers of the 1930s and 1940s, only with moar cowbell (no, really, LOTS OF COWBELL. Also, washboards, champagne glasses, toy train whistles, and wind-up police sirens, all recorded live with one track for radio play.) How could I *not* adore them?
   
   Here, have a quick Best-of-Spike-Jones sampler. I especially commend Lord Peter fans to this cover of "Love In Bloom." :D


4. The Primordial Ass: one of my favorite nonfiction books in all the world is Odell Shepard's opus "The Lore of the Unicorn", which covers everything that could ever possibly be said about the origin of the unicorn legend and the forms its story has taken, from Enkidu at the watering-hole to 17th century Christian Fundamentalists who argued that if we give up the literal truth of unicorns, the whole Bible will be open to doubt, and Christianity will end. And Shepard says it in such a gloriously old-fashioned and erudite (but entirely entertaining) style that I feel like I'm sitting in the Bodleian the minute I pick it up.
   
   He has a section in there on the "three-legged ass" of Zoroastrian creation mythology, which 'sits amid the sea Varkash' and makes the waters clean. The image, and the quotation he gave with it, haunted me for months; I love mythology, but there are some primordial myths that wind around some cord in my reptile brain and give me nightmares, bits of my own personal Al-Azif. The Fomorians did. And so did the primordial ass.
   
   Anyway, then I was reading Wicked Words, an equally erudite and entertaining etymological dictionary of cursing, and he started talking about his search for the Primordial Ass, referring here of course to the other sense of "Ass", and also referencing a legend about how three-legged asses can't keep their balance, and so require an ass-sling (though he thinks the reference in ass-sling is "fundamentally" anatomical.) For the curious, one of the oldest references to the American anatomical ass he found was in these poetic verses, referring to the 1860 Democratic convention:

   Then, an ultra southern platform, they made and tried to pass 
   When up jumped all the Douglas men and quickly showed their as-
   tonishement, at proceedings such as these,
   For a platform made to suit the South, the North would never please.
   
   When Douglas found his chances were scarcely worth a shuck
   He made his delegates go home, to take a little fu-
   -rther time, in order as you see,
   To meet again in Baltimore on some one to agree.

   I believe that was the point at which I said "Obscure comparative folklore, weird linguistics, 19th century vernacular poetry, and it sounds far dirtier than it is: clearly this phrase belongs on my interests list!"


5. Crossovers: I like crossovers. I am a sucker for crossovers. I kind of, deep down, fundamentally believe that all stories that I like are true. And therefore, it ought to be possible for all stories to meet. The first thing I do when I get into a new fandom is figure out how it crosses over with all my others, in such a way that they both make more sense than they did before. (Someday, ask me about my theory that the Ancients created Immortals and therefore John/Elizabeth is incest. :P)
   
   I'm a sucker for reading crossovers, I think about crossover theory all the time, 90% of the stories I attempt to write are crossovers one way or another, and I have noticed that several random people have actually bookmarked my Crossover tag on del.icio.us.
   
   So, basically: crossovers!
   
   Also, Pantheistic Multiperson Solipsism.


6. Fleegix: Many, many years ago (in 1979), the great Daniel Pinkwater published a children's book entitled Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars. When I was about ten, I picked up a withdrawn library copy of it at a tiny used bookstore somewhere on the Delmarva Peninsula. And it changed my life.
   
   It was the first book I had ever found that described the experience of smart, geeky, fat, not-normal American kids in a way I recognized. By which I mean: yeah, the popular kids are stupid and cruel, but who cares? We're having way more fun without them. And the world is a weirder place than they'll ever notice. I kind of want to give a copy of this book to every weird kid the year they turn ten. (If you'd like to find about about the Pinkwaterverse, I commend you to the Hoboken Chicken Emergencyclopedia. All the titles on my LJ came from Pinkwater; I haven't decided if I'm re-using them here, but I'm leaning toward yes. Also, I wrote Harry Potter crossover fanfic for it once, and got gushing (or possibly just startled, it was hard to tell) e-mail feedback from Daniel Pinkwater himself. :D
   
   Anyway, in the course of this book, our heroes go into State Twenty-Six and wind up in the Lost Continent of Waka-Waka, where a once-great civilization reached such a peak of boredom that all they do anymore is stare into their fleegix mugs and contemplate the beauty of the universe. (Fleegix is a drink, served with whipped cream and marshmallows, that is the most popular hot drink in the Solar System, and also a favorite of Rolzup, the Martian High Commisioner, whom I love with a desperate and unattainable passion.) It is made from the berries of the zitkis bush, which grows only on a mountaintop in Waka-waka.) I would love to travel to a civilization where all I had to do was think and drink fleegix.
   
   Also, it sounds yummy! (Pinkwater was a big one for obscure soft drinks. I may have gotton both that, and my love for books about the paranormal, from Pinkwater. Someday, I will find an actual bottle of Nafsu Cola or Bullfrog Root Beer, and then my life will be complete.)
   
   Pinkwater's America is an amazing and wonderful place to explore. Imagine if Terry Pratchett wrote American Gods, and was an angry fat zen Jew from Chicago, and you might begin to understand the glory that is Daniel Pinkwater. (If you ever truly comprehend his full glory, you dedicate your life to marching through the streets, carrying a paper cup full of pebbles, wearing a red clown nose, and chanting.)


7. Oracular Pigs: My three favorite oracular pigs are Hen Wen of Prydain; the great black boar Hegdis-Noon, the wizard Nun's favorite of all the pig herds of Hel; and, of course, the Transcendent Pig, who is probably an ancestor of them both, knowing him.
   
   Basically, I have learned that if a story has pigs in it who prophesy, it will be a good story. (And it will be Some Pig, of course!) Really, it's more astonishing that so few people list oracular pigs as an interest.

PS: Is anyone else getting an occasionally-recurring error when they try to preview from the web interface? I keep getting: [Error: Can't call method "imgtag" on unblessed reference at '/home/dw/current/htdocs/preview/entry.bml' line 106. @ dfw-web02]

Unblessed indeed, DW. Unblessed indeed.