Selkie

Christian, I am so very sorry. I can't imagine how much you must be hurting right now.

Selkie:

 

Package recieved!  CD's are cool...music I like but proably wouldn't buy on my own, so that's awesome....

 

The cats got into the box to get the toys, they love them (especially the white mouse...they fight over it!)

I'm very pleased to hear that. Wasn't at all sure about the CDs but figured they were worth a try, and cats are notoriously difficult to please. Wouldn't have guessed the white mouse as their favorite at all, but that's felines for you. As long as they prefer the toys to the box they came in, I'm happy!

I will give appropriate thanks for the other thing when I have time.  It deserves a special thak you.....

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Uh, there's more than one way for me to take that statement, in light of the nature of the item. Should I be worried?

As always, my thanks to everyone for their support, encouragement, and outbursts of righteous indignation. Helps me to maintain my belief that people are basically good beings capable of great warmth, compassion, and selflessness, despite the regularity with which they knowingly and intentionally hurt each other.

Selkie- Any improvement in whatever situation you are facing? With all my heart I wish that 2006 will be a better year for you.

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If someone pressing the "mute" button on my emotions counts as improvement, then yes. The feelings are all still there, just ... faint. Objectively, no, things are worse. A lot more has gone wrong in the lives of the people closest to me, and I'm doing what I can to cushion the blows and help pick up the pieces.

I'm grateful for the emotional mute, because I spent a good chunk of today trying to console and encourage a friend of mine who told me a couple of days ago that she's been told to resign her commission in the Marines "or else." Without going into detail, the "or else" is not pretty. She doesn't want to leave, and is trying desperately to find a way to stay. Did I mention that she's been treated for depression since serving on active duty in the Middle East? Not a good day, but definitely helped by not being eaten alive from inside with my own grief and rage. Also helps to support another dear friend who's going through an unusually rough emotional patch, that has resulted in many a midnight phone conversation that extends into the wee hours of the morning.

As for the stolen toys, school supplies, clothing, and other goods intended for a poor family that desperately needs them and which exists, for reasons not suitable to disclosure on a public message board, outside the existing social support system:

Several people involved, who absolutely hate each others guts and never agree with each other about anything, all agree that on the basis of the evidence they have, most of those items were stolen by the person directed to deliver them. Unfortunately it's not legal proof, but for lack of a better description "we know." There's no avenue by which to make the situation right, unfortunately.

As for my family situation, which is spawning new heads like a Hydra, it's too early to tell whether there's a material improvement in any of the disasters. Too many lies. Too many avoidances. WAY too much drama. If any personal and professional situations warrant high drama, these do, but it gets in the way of solving those problems. So I smile, offer the same advice that was sought and rejected months ago and which might have prevented or minimized these massive problems, and bite my tongue to avoid saying less than productive things like "I told you so." Sometimes it's damn hard to be the only adult in a family of people all of whom are older than I.

I've been coping by shopping toy stores in between bouts, and buying cute toys I have no room for on sales too good to ignore. The boosts may be small and short-lived, but at this point, I'll take what I can get. We will also not discuss my chocolate and frappucino consumption; I figure crisis counseling burns lots of calories.

Anyone care to assist me in offering a sacrifice to the daemon sultan Azathoth for a better 2006?

NBC, with Bad Santa in a very distant second.

Happy birthday, GenGris!

Have you ever had the feeling that you're living in a nightmare, but can't wake up? Yet another frightening family development presented itself after I posted earlier - one that can not end well. Will someone please wake me? Please?

Damn!  I hope evertything works out, and I'm glad it's not your health this time.  The good thing is that family are people

I believe I'm the world's only AI program to have hatched from a frog's egg (ask any member of my family - they'll confirm the egg part, at least). I'm not sure any of my family IS human. Throw us off of Devil Reef, and we'd probably sprout gills. I wonder if the madhouse at Canton is accepting new residents? I can think of a few relatives in need of their care.

, and if they piss you off too much, you could always call the Elder Ones to take them!  Cthuhlu f'tagn!

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He he he. Lots of merit in that suggestion. I even have an Elder Sigil handy. Hmmm.... I wonder if Mighty Chulhu is accepting tribute at this time?

My plan for a nice cooked ham topped with lingonberries was tragically dashed. I wound up eating pepperoni pizza, macaroni and cheese, and hazelnut cookies. I didn't even get to use my brand-spanking new wok - wah!

Solstice + Christmas yielded some great treasures for me too!

A terrific wok & accessories

Saffron

DCD Swamp Thing (which I've wanted forever but would never buy for myself). Somewhere a MOC collector is weeping that I immediately "liberated" him from his pristine packaging

DCD Spider Jerusalem, Tim Hunter, The Engineer

A whole lotta little older cartoon Swamp Things. My very own Parliament of Trees!

"Wicked" soundtrack

The Penguin collected editions of almost everything Lovecraft wrote

Gift certificates to the local carwash, movie theater, and comic shop

The world's most hilarious plush blue frog, which sings "La Vida Loca"

Frog-themed sticky note pad

Subscription renewals to a bunch of my favorite magazines

A while back, our good-hearted Tigger sent me a copy of the New Zealand classic A Good Keen Man, to cheer me up. At the task, it succeeded admirably.

The book tells the supposedly true tales of its author, Barry Crump, during his 1960's adventures as a government-paid culler of the non-native deer, pigs, and goats bent on de-foresting the native habitat. Far from being a book about hunting, it's a book about people - specifically, the succession of "good, keen men" sent to partner with him during the long, arduous trips into the forest - and dogs. Each human proves unsuitable to the task for one entertaining reason or another, For that matter, the same is true of many of the half-trained dogs. If the tales are a bit "tall", well - they're too much fun to quibble about accuracy.

For a book rooted in a very specific time and place, the humor and the characters are universal - "The Office" in the Kiwi hinterlands, if you will. Government incompetence, archetypes of rugged adventurers, and "experts" of dubious qualifications are universal.

He he he. If I bring home that Hellboy, I'll be without furniture, appliances, or a roof over my head after my family kicks me out!

(Is it evil of me to think that if I tell them he's a present for a friend whose birthday isn't for a long time off, I might be able to sneak him in AND keep my head attached to my shoulders?)

ETA: Let's hope that strategy works, because I returned to the store and bought him!

Go ahead. Rub salt in the wound. :icon_cry: Can't make me feel worse (well, toy-related worse) than I do already. The only place I *might* be able to stash him would be in a closet next to my old Robbie the Robot, and that's the closet that gets opened once a decade or so. The regularshelves are literally bowing from the weight of all the toys they're supporting. I even hesitated to pick up the one 6" figure I did get because I don't know where I'm going to stash her.

I NEED DISPLAY SPACE!!!!!!!!

Tower Records is having a 50% off on toys sale in-store through tomorrow. I came. I saw 18" Hellboy with closed mouth, just like I wanted. And I ... walked out of the store without him, because I have absolutely not one square inch of space in which to put him.

WAH!

Slick, hate that the job needs doing but awesome to hear of a success in doing it. Congrats to everyone on the team!

Everyone, many thanks for all the well wishes and support. We're all still feeling very down. Cally's death ushered in a slew of family crises which have kept me too busy to grieve, for better or worse. At least I've finally convinced Jo to eat, which is an encouraging sign.

Today I washed and packed Cally's things to donate to a local greyhound rescue. :icon_cry:

I will pick them up them. Thanks. I think the second one is when she visits Austria.

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lyra, after seeing your fantastic grimoire covers I can safely say that you of all the people on this board need to purchase Epileptic.

As for Persepolis, the first volume "The Story of a Childhood" is amazing. The second one, "The Story of a Return", well.... a surly confused teenager ex-pat doesn't make nearly as interesting a protagonist as a little girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution. Just remember, these books are fiction, not non-fiction as many reviewers seem to think, although supposedly many of the events are drawn from the author's life.

The third book by Satrapi (not released under the Persepolis banner, IIRC), Embrodieries, contains some little interesting tidbits about members of the author's family and insights into Iranian culture, but at the same time, I found it to be a lightweight little piffle of a book. I'm glad I read it, but even more glad I was able to borrow it from the library rather than having to pay for it.

On lyra's recommendation, Ibought Mad Man's Drum, which I'll wax rhapsodic about some time when I have the time and strength. Until then, I'll restrict myself to saying that I greatly enjoyed it, both as art and as an important work from a very early stage in the medium.

Oh, and my copy of The Silver Pony can scarcely be ripped from my hand. I can scarcely believe how vividly I remember images in the book I haven't seen for close to thirty years.... and my feeling as a child, that even though this was a book without words it was still an adult's book? I was a smart kid. Wonder what happened subsequently?

Cally has gone to join her brother Shadowman, and bestest buddy Elvis, in the fields where the hares are succulent and the hounds can run all day without tiring. The vet described her as a 60 pound dog with a 120 pound dog's heart. I doubt even she understood how true those words are.

I'm off to console her ten-year old daughter, who has stoicly born the loss of other members of the household but is distraught this morning.

Actually, I think so.  i got a postcard from the post office telling me there is a package waiting...but I don't know where the post office is around here!  I always wait until I'm "in town" to use the post office!  I'll have to look for it this week, now that I'm off work.

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At least we all know why the world hasn't ended yet! If you call, they should re-deliver without your having to find the physical post office. Remember, don't open the closed inner box before the solstice.

kinki and Akhira, gorgeous work!

I think Bob sahould have a beard. 

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Great Og, you're right! Why didn't that occur to me? And why didn't I see any while visiting the sorts of stores that sell hats for vampires?!

Drinking while on medications will definitely enhance the experience of viewing the following photo. Nothing says Christmas like Kris Kindle Bob. Yes, it's that time of year again....

Psstt.... code TOYDEC24 will yield 30% off at Toyzz.com .through the end of the month.

Not that I finally ordered those dinosaurs I wanted or anything. Oh, no sirreee, not ME... <whistles innocently>

Increasingly, the state is dictating to  property owners what they can and can't do with their rental properties.

But just coincidentally, none of that includes protections for tenants, right?

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With respect to accusations of criminal conduct? No, it doesn't - at least none in the ordinances I've seen. With respect to other forms of misbehavior by tenants, in Illinois renters have gobs of protection, even when they clearly don't deserve it (e.g., nonpayment of rent for months, extensive damage to property, etc.). I have some friends who live Round Lake Beach who used to derive a substantial part of their income from rental properties, but have gradually sold them off. Oh, the stories they have to tell....

The lighter side of government censorship of art:

The Snow Penis

Complete with a picture of the masterpiece:

They call this "finely detailed"?!

"Selkie: How can that possibly be legal?

I don't know, because it sounds absolutely illegal to me, and I can't imagine how it has survived court challenge. Of course, as I bolded in the original article, apparently Round Lake Beach doesn't even care if their actions are legal. "

 

Because property owners like this are given a hell of a lot more rights than people who don't own property in America. It's the fucking system this whole god-forsaken country was built on!

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I think the problem runs even deeper than that. Increasingly, the state is dictating to property owners what they can and can't do with their rental properties. Note that in both the RLB and Schaumburg ordinances (and a similar, even more draconian version, enacted in Zion a few years ago), government can force landowners to evict renters that the state doesn't like. Ultimately the property owner's not calling the shots, the government is.

I was very, very disappointed with Syriana. Convoluted story, poor pacing and incredibly underdeveloped characters who were victimized by the "West Wing" style of writing dialogue--they didn't so much talk to each other as much as they spouted off political diatribes to one another.

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A friend of mine summarized

Syriana by saying that it revealed the "shocking" truth that oil companies will do reprehensible things to turn a profit. <yawns>

I thought King Kong had the potential to be a great rip-roaring action adventure; as it stands, I thought it was merely OK. Kong looked fabulous, as did many of the dinosaurs. At three hours it was self-indulgently long, and in desperate need of some judicious trimming. I thought the dinosaur stampede was absurd on a variety of levels, and I kept wondering whether Wile E Coyote had wandered in from an adjacent computer and put on a dinosaur costume. I thought (what I've been told about) the original film's racism was alive and well, and not ameliorated by the conspicuously multi-ethnic casting of the ship's crew. (Felt a bit like the original "Star Trek", it did.) Curiously, despite being way too long, I kept feeling like we were supposed to know more about the relationships between the crew members than we actually did, especially the young kid with the apparently tragic background.

Adrien Brody was great. Jack Black was underused, and I kept waiting for his character to have some kind of epiphany that never happened.

The Kiln Goddess and I have made up, without need of a blood sacrifice. Don't even ask what (common, strange, and increasingly hard to ignore) omen marked the occasion. Suffice it to say that my firings are now going off without a hitch, and I've gotten several nice pieces out of hte latest spate of firings. I love my tiny little kiln (smaller than a breadbox, although not by much) but man, when every piece requires three to five firings, one gets really sick of pulling the same pieces out again... and again.... and again.

Today I went shopping for a needy family "adopted" by my mother's office. That's always a lot of fun. Their story is so movie-of-the-week that it would be hard to take at face value except that we know someone connected to her. Ran amuck at the discounters and picked up some toys and a lot of necessities. With the combined purchasing power of the office, they should have a very merry Christmas.

All of this made car repairs at two different places for two different problems - and notification that my car needs an additional $1500 worth of work soon - a little easier to bear.