Like an exoskeleton

I flew in to Binghamton. Andy, my mom, and Elias came to the airport to pick me up and then we drove home to Grandma's Shabbat dinner.

home.

I got up early and caught the train to LA. Arthur met me at Union Station, and we walked around downtown LA, then we drove to Santa Monica and we walked around there, looking at the lights and the dinosaur topiary and the shops and the street musicians. We walked past a church that was about to start a service and I paused and a man in white robes invited us to see their Christmas pageant and so we went in to the Episcopalian Church and watched their Christmas pageant. An adult speaker narrated in rhyme while children in costume walked up to the front of the church. Some of the children were holding star balloons and, adorably, on of them let go and the balloon floated up and up and up to the tall ceiling of the church. By the end of the pageant, there were three star balloons up at the ceiling.

Arthur drove me to the hostel by LAX where I'm spending the night. They gave us complimentary champagne, and after drinking his, Arthur left to spend Christmas Eve with his family.

9am flight tomorrow. Hopefully my stopover in Detroit will not be affected by the snow-pocalypse.

[Edit, 6:40am: I forgot to mention the art gallery! The theme was the Virgin Mary and we met some of the artists in the back room where one of them was giving a guy a mo-hawk.]

What is an appropriate tip for the person whose job it is to drive me to the airport on Christmas morning at 7am?

I'm thinking $5 because I would normally tip $1. But that might be low. I'm not sure.

(The ride is included with the price of a night at the hostel, so it's technically free.)

My friend Emmy made a shocking discovery recently; someone in Japan is totally ripping off my comic! Fortunately she has a friend who knows a little bit of Japanese so he helped translate it into English. It's a little rough but it gets the idea across. Still, can you believe this??
( Read more... )

Originally published at Transneptune. Please leave any comments there.

I suppose I must comment on it.  I went, I saw, I enjoyed.  But I don’t think I enjoyed it for the reasons one “should” enjoy a movie.

Avatar has been dominating the airwaves and the conversations around me a lot.  It’s certainly good in many respects, and the amount of conversational fodder it has provided is one of those.  But the problems almost balance the good aspects.  It has a schizoid attitude towards and portrayal of the indigenous people, well-addressed in this review.  There are so many problems with it requiring a white, male, American soldier to make the indigenous people win that I don’t know where to start, but the short version is that all those things would be OK if they mattered to his ground-breaking plan.  But actually?  His plan was a non-plan.  I’ll avoid saying more for spoilers-sake, in case you care.

So why was it good?  I enjoyed watching it for much the same reasons I would enjoy looking at a painting.  It was, quite simply, visually stunning.  The story was thin, archetypal, problematic in terms of race-attitudes, but man was it pretty to look at.  But it was also good in terms of inspiration for secondary-creation: the conlang for the Na’vi was fabulous, and well-acted, and the world had many compelling features, inspiring me to some fun co-exobiology thoughts.  And the movie’s ecological message is not subtle, either, which I think is fabulous—no need to tread softly around such a message, just put it out there.

So, ultimately, the movie is good not for much in itself, besides the pretty, but it’s quite good for the topics it gets you thinking about and talking about, most clearly race/privilege, and the environment.  I’d recommend it.

I just posted this as a comment in someone else's lj, but I couldn't remember the name of the book or the author. Thanks to the internet, I figured it out, so here's what I meant to say...

I think Andre Norton was influenced by Láadan, if I am correctly recalling a book I read in 7th grade, On Wings of Magic. The "evidence particle" was mentioned as a part of the language of a group of women who lived separately from men. (I believe the men were called Falconers.)

I really liked the idea of the evidence particle and I often wish it existed in English because I tend to talk with a great deal of use of evidence phrases. I had thought the concept was invented by Andre Norton.

I never heard of Láadan but since it is one person's construction of a language for women, it seems like an interesting commentary on womanhood.

~~~

Today I heard on NPR that the children of divorced parents want to have both their parents at holidays. I thought for a moment, I'm so glad I never had to deal with my parents separating or divorcing and I can just be happy spending holidays with one side or the other. But then I realized that we have constructed New Years so I will be with all three of my parents. I'm flying home, and my dad and stepmom are visiting for the holiday.

~~~

I don't understand why people apologize for not posting. If I don't post to LJ, I think that the person who loses out is me, not my friends.

Originally published at Transneptune. Please leave any comments there.

Too much happening lately to catch up on writing about: saw Vienna Teng, awesome as ever, with Allie, awesome as ever.  Snow again, just after I made it into NYC for a quick seeing of Miles and Mendez and Lisa, and Avatar.  The movie was visually stunning, had a fine but thin story, and some real problems with portrayal of indigenous cultures.  But was basically fun.  Now, I’m working on all sorts of coding projects, and really ought to admit to myself that I have many people to buy gifts for.

Too many project ideas is a great state to be in, when you have the chance to work on them as much as you want.

Oh yeah: snow, twice, BEAUTIFUL.