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2003-03-30
Does Mrs. Rowling Approve?
Unlikely, very unlikely. But I like irreverent humour, so I do. And if you're in need of some comic relief, may be you will, too. Now, I'm sceptic of most fan fic, due to its doubtful legal standing and, uhm, artistic merit. But this story of Naked Quidditch (courtesy of ErosBlog) is freaking hilarious!
I sure got a bunch of good laughs out of it. And no, it does not make for one-handed reading...
And now excuse me while I finally go and do the work I had to take home over the weekend on command of my boss. My wife has threatened to withhold Sunday Evening Nookie if I don't, and we can't have that!
2003-03-29
And just to prove how damnably hard it is to produce a decent poem in a foreign language (especially when you're not that good at it to start with):
Past, Present, Future
Like the fibres of a fungus,
the problems of your past
grow pervasiveley throughout your personality
blotting out the beauty
of what you would be without them.
But your buoyancy brooks not being gainsaid,
and aided by your energy
and your penchant for perfection
you use your resources
to conquer the cancer
that has seized your spirit.
Learning new languages of body and mind,
spoken and silent, said or thought,
you express yourself in words and actions,
freeing yourself for the future
and putting behind your past.
Though there are still a thousand things
and dangers to draw you from your destiny
The brilliance of your beauty will unfold,
a sight to sear the the unwary spectator.
A promise to make life worth living.
2003-03-27
Music was my first love
I've always loved music, listening to it, making it myself, but never, strangely, dancing to it. I mostly listen to music that either soothes me or stimulates me, so that what I like is a strange mixture without rhyme or reason. As a result my tastes in music are varied, ranging from Baroque (Bach, Vivaldi, Händel, Pachelbel) via American Folk (e.g. Simon & Garfunkel), Pop/Rock (The Beatles, Billy Joel, etc.) and Country (Dixie Chicks) to people like Loreena McKennitt, R. Carlos Nakai, and Karl Jenkins. Things I don't like include Metal, Hard Rock, Techno, and most elevator music. ;-)
My love of music has never kept me from making some myself, so I sang in the county choir from age 7, until puberty and the changes to my voice that went with it put an end to that. Later I took guitar lessons, but lost interest when my skill was barely sufficient to accompany myself with some easy strumming and picking, which is something that despite my lack of skill I still love to do occasionally (Attention: your ears might start bleeding!).
And so you all have something else to laugh about, here is one of my two WinAMP playlists. I'll be honestly surprised if anyone knows more than a good third of these:
- (ng pei sin)-i like chopin
- (norman lin)-house of the rising sun
- (yawron)-flashdance
- alphaville(ng pei sin)-forever young
- antichrist-jumping jackson
- axel f
- ballade pour adeline
- beatles()-wanna hold your hands
- berlin(ng pei sin)-take my breath away
- bryan adams(ng pei sin)-i do it for you
- clyde of triumph-prelude
- dens design-boom and she cums
- dens design-empty spaces 2
- depeche mode(stefan klose)-never let me down again
- depeche mode(stefan klose)-somebody
- depeche mode-cant get enough
- dr awesome-now what 3
- equinoxe2
- erasure-mix
- every breath you take
- fctitletune
- fgmusicmenu(when the saints)
- fgmusicmenu pc(la cucaracha)
- firefox and tip-blues
- firefox and tip-chinese dream
- froggies swamp-adagio cantabile
- genesis(dr awesome)-mama
- groo-towards immortality
- harakiri
- jan hammer()-crockett's theme
- jason thomale-loves price
- jellybean-fantasy
- kerry emerson-twilight dreams
- m
- marillion(graham hay)-cover my eyes
- max headroom
- noiseless-variations
- ola wolf-star trek symphony
- pachelbel(acsoft)-canon in d
- popcorn
- sll kefrens-sad song
- sll kefrens-the last destiny
- swantti-daylight all night
- swantti-through the time
- u4ia-1992
- u4ia-1993
- u4ia-bass ic blues
- u4ia-endless worry
- u4ia-fairy lights
- u4ia-good bye
- u4ia-i'll be waiting for you
- u4ia-japanese intentions
- u4ia-klims theme
- u4ia-know what to say
- u4ia-lioths theme
- u4ia-listen to the rhythm
- u4ia-mandies theme
- u4ia-midnight at noon
- u4ia-one day
- u4ia-shadows
- u4ia-sleezy bar blues
- u4ia-sweetfree wurlitzer
- u4ia-taik yor ty'm
- u4ia-teddy bear boogie
- u4ia-the final frontier
- u4ia-u4ia
- watchman trixal-unveiled
- zoso-contemplation
2003-03-24
Stars and Stripes
We're having the most amazing spell of clear skies, sunny days, and star spangled nights since mid-february, except that this one has been lasting since last Thursday and shows no signs of abating. Consequently I've been doing a lot of star gazing these last few nights. Orion, Taurus, and all the other signs which form the beauty that is the winter night sky are all up there, AND Jupiter together with his four bigger moons is out as well, and who could resist that combination? Not me, that's for sure.
And all the sunshine has finally convinced the local greenery that, yes, spring is finally getting there, and that now is the time for the spring flowers to get their blossoms out and for the rest to start showing some early green. And it's been warm enough (almost 60°F in the shadow) that we've been able to have both lunch and afternoon coffee in the sun on the patio. In other words: life is good.
And life is even better, when on top of all that goodness nature manages to tickle my sense of curiosity, as it did on Friday morning when I was driving to work. The sun, although still quite low on the horizon, was shining in a bright blue, cloudless sky that was accentuated only by a few white lines - half a dozen rather long contrails caused by the dense flight traffic overhead.
When I looked up again at the next traffic lights, I found to my amazement a stripe of dark, deep blue among all the white ones, reaching seemingly all across the sky. Intrigued, I craned my neck to get a better view and finally found the bright white spot of an air plane at the end of that deep blue stripe, itself trailed by a long, white contrail that almost touched the horizon behind me... Which was the moment when the driver behind me honked me out of my sky gazing reverie. So I drove on in the thickening morning traffic, sneaking another look or two at the contrail and its dark blue cousin.
When I had to stop at the next rotary I got another look at the curious sight and finally realized what was causing that oddly symmetric display: With the sun barely above the horizon and the humidity in the upper layers of the atmosphere apparently quite high (hence the long contrails and the bright blue sky) the white contrail was casting a shadow that was made visible by that slightly foggy layer of air. And I was again amazed how nature can produce beauty from the simplest, most mundane things...
[If you thought this was going to be about anything having to do with the US or that blasted war, shame on you. You ought to know me better by now ;-)]
2003-03-21
Thanks, Doctor Gräfenberg
No, I didn't get to meditating last evening. My wife, when she came home last night had, uhm, other plans. And it turns out she was right.
The sex we had was the best in months, our mutual need raw and almost primeval. From intense making out we quickly progressed to me giving her arms, her neck, her breasts and her stomach a veritable tongue bath. After that our breathing was hard and deep, our skins shiny with sweat. When, continuing the tongue bath of her stomach and breasts, I buried first one, than two fingers in her needy, moist folds, things took a new and pleasant turn. She completely phased out, all sweat and moaning, her labored breathing only broken by the occasional shudder and demand of "More!" and "Harder!".
I have never before seen her so wanton, so totally lost in the act, but then, I have never before managed to give her a G-spot orgasm (or several, as it turned out). When she finally came down enough to demand I enter her with something else than my fingers, the only small disappointment of the evening materialized: our favourite position - missionary - seems to be singularly unsuitable for stimulating her g-spot, at least with sufficient force to get her off again - any suggestions from the readership before I go and search the net for g-spot friendly positions?. (She needs a lot of force, apparently - my left arm is sore today!)
A few observations:
A g-spot orgasm is really sufficiently different from a clitoral one that the distinction between the two is of more than academic interest: Where she always needs a pause after a clitoral orgasm (say after me going down on her) for her overexcited clit to regain some decorum, she just kept going on through the g-spot orgasms, if anything getting more lustful, eager, and excited as they swept over her. Heck, she was still so horny this morning, it was all I could do to fend her off so we both wouldn't be too late to work, not that I would have minded a detour through the sheets...
She also told me that it felt very different and somewhat strange for her. From her words, the orgasms seemed to come from deep inside her, involving her whole body in a way the clitoral orgasms never do.
And why the heck hasn't the good Doctor Gräfenberg been awarded a Nobel Prize in biology yet? Surely, a discovery that brings so much joy into the world deserves that, no?
Anyway, I foresee much playing around with our new-found toy as well as a lot of muscle-buildup in my arms in the not too distant future, unless I can get the purchase of another dill or vibe approved by the Head of Household - the silicone of the Bobby Sue is too soft to transmit the amount of pressure she needs on her g-spot...
2003-03-20
Emotionally Raw
[ATTENTION: whine alert]
When I was 11, my parents divorced. As the result of losing for all practical purposes what was then the most important person in my young life, my dad, I closed up and hid my sensitive emotional life behind walls of cold intellectual cynicism. It took me five years to see the error in that, and when I started railing against my self-imposed emotional isolation, it was almost too late.
Only when I met the wonderful woman that is now my wife more than a dozen years ago did I start making actual progress. With her help I started opening up again, feeling again, and finally being able to truly love. But still, we all carry the mistakes of our past with us, everywhere we go. In my case that means that having suppressed my emotions throughout my teenage years, I now find myself in the unenviable position of being emotionally sensitive but having learned no way of actually dealing with those emotions which now threaten to overwhelm me from time to time.
Yesterday was the worst day in a long time, and only in part due to the Iraq crisis. When I went on my business trip last week, I feared that in the absence from my wife my Other Love would well up again, so I packed all kinds means to distract myself. I was relieved that nothing happened during that trip, but I now realize that relief was premature - in the last few days things have developed into the worst emotional overload in more than a decade: yesterday I was absolutely unable to get any work done for the whole day. I just sat there and blankly stared at the monitor, constantly fighting back a growing urge to cry for no good reason whatsoever.
Now excuse me while I go and meditate, and perhaps try to get a session of self-hypnosis going...
2003-03-17
Fun on the Train Ride
As I've mentioned before, my relationship with social conventions is strenuous at best. As a result I love me a good mind fuck, as the Laughing Boy would say. Getting one means someone has been able to toy around with my preconceptions, proving them to be false in that particular case, ideally with the result that I have learned something. Giving one means I get to challenge our social conventions and can derive some humour value from the act, which is worthwhile in and of itself, as far as I am concerned...
On my train ride home from Frankfurt on Thursday, I sat in my business suit, trolley boarding case by my side, reading "The War of the Jewels", the English language version of part 11 of the "History of Middle Earth". Eventually my peripheral vision picked up two young women, probably around 15 or so, sitting opposite from me and trying to read the title of the book from its spine. I of course did the socially proper thing, i.e. I acted as if I hadn't noticed anything. When after several not so subtle attempts involving tilting their heads and upper torsos, and some back-and-forth discussion between them, they had finally managed to come up with a translation that satisfied them, the blonde of the two whispered to her dark haired companion:
"With that English title, do you think the whole book is in English?"
"Yes, of course."
"And do you think he can understand what's in it?"
"Well, he wouldn't read it if he didn't, would he."
"Hmm, and can he understand us?"
To which I answered in my softest, friendliest voice "I do, yes.", smiled at them, and promptly got rewarded with a giggle from the brunette and the view of her blonde companion turning a lovely shade of crimson. :-)
"I'm so embarassed." the blonde whispered when she had gotten over her shock, which earned her another giggle from her companion, who seemed to have picked up on what I had done, and another smile from me. Not suprisingly the two kept silent and, having to catch a tram, got out at the next stop. When the brunette was at the door, she turned back to look at me, still a twinkle in her eyes which kept me smiling to myself until I had to get out several stops later.
2003-03-16
On the Road Again
Being yanked out of sleep at 3:45 a.m., a time that is by nature and everything that is good and decent reserved for sleep, and sleep alone, is brutal. But I can't leave home without breakfast, and when you need a good ninety minutes to get from your home to Berlin Zoo, where the express train for Frankfurt/Main leaves at 6:13 a.m., that's when your day starts. But riding the InterCity Express through the german flatlands at that unholy our does have one special perk when the weather is just right: you can witness dawn work its special kind of magic on the country side. And seeing the sun rise, watching the morning fog cling to the dells and meadows and finally melt in the warmth of the early spring sun almost makes up for a night that is too short whichever way you look at it.
Of course, 11 a.m., the starting time of the workshop we've crossed Germany to attend, is exactly the time my sleep deficit makes me start to get sleepy again. But the workshop itself went well, both from my personal (I didn't have to do our presentation, I didn't strangle myself wearing a tie for the first time in my life, and I didn't fall asleep) and the company's point of view (Beside the political animosities and the opposition to our ideas, which were both expected, we received some unexpected help from the IT department of our customer. Now we'll see if that was enough so we can make an official offer.)
With that first workshop closed at 3 p.m. I unexpectedly found myself with a few hours of spare time on a quite agreeable early spring day, so I walked the 2 miles from our hotel to the Frankfurt city center for some sightseeing. Now, I don't like big cities (In fact the only city with more than a million people that I ever liked was San Francisco, with London and Prague coming in a distant second and third place), and Frankfurt was no exception. I've seen more beautiful skylines, I've also seen better shopping streets than the "Zeil", and I've seen far more beautiful mediaeval squares than the "Römer".
But the mix of people thronging around in the city proved to be interesting. Where Berlin feels busy and hectic, almost nervous, Frankfurt looks every bit as busy, but with a calmer, more sedate pace. And maybe it's the coming spring, but I haven't seen quite that many young couples holding hands, holding each other in their arms, or just plain making out, for quite some time. Also, the ethnic mix seems to be slightly different: where Berlin has lots of Turks, Yugoslavs, and a colorful mix of Eastern Europeans (mostly Polish, Russian and Ukrainian), here I found a large number of dark skinned people as well as hearing lots of Arabic and Russian.
When the sun set, dusk again transformed everything around me. The city lit up, the mediaeval houses in the city center looked more charming in the city lights, and even the skyline looked better with the electric lighting at work. It still didn't have a snowball's chance in hell at beating Shanghai for the sheer Wow factor, but at least the sky scrapers stopped looking downright ugly...
As expected, the second workshop with a different department of the same customer went really well. For the first time I met many of the people we had been working with for more than a year, and there was lots of agreement and an atmosphere that made working with these people a pleasure. Problems got identified, solutions, or ways to get to them, were found, and decisions were made. It's quite amazing what having a common goal (making things work right) and a determination to get there, or at least as close as possible, can do for an event like this. And this despite the tight budget, the political infighting between different departments of our customer and a past of many stupid decisions in this project.
Here's hoping that more workshops with the same attendents will happen in the future, and that our beancounting boss will see the wisdom of letting one of us attend as well, even if no direct monetary benefit (read a follow-up project) comes from it. Maybe doing some spiel with the words "customer relationship management" embedded in strategic places will do the trick...
2003-03-14
The Caveman in Me
Last weekend we had to crop out some dead branches from the big larch behind our house. With nowhere to depose of the wood, a fire was quickly started. Most of the twigs and smaller branches had burned down by dusk, leaving lots of embers and a few thicker branches turned into charcoal to smoulder in the darkness. Tending the fire, I stood there, staring into the embers, letting my mind go blank and forgetting the world around me...
I have often wondered what it is about a fire, or the surf, or a star spangled sky that makes me stare, mind blank and unthinking, at these things. It's not hypnosis, which has a different feel to it, although the flame of a single candle can have that effect when I want it to. This feels more like letting go of things around me, living in the moment, letting the visual stimulus of the fire ar surf, always the same but also always subtly different, subtly changing, overpower my senses and blot out everything else. In these moments I often feel as if I am channelling my inner caveman, sitting in mindless wonder before the miracle that is a fire, or the everchanging sea, or the vast dome of the night sky.
I am grateful for these moments which remind me that although our frantic style of living all too often makes the world look like a madhouse, there are things that have been there before, are, and still will be when we have passed.
D. W. St. John: Sisters of Glass
When I started reading this book, I was ready after the first few pages to wipe it from my HD and start reading something else. The reason for this is the rather odd narrative style: present instead of past tense, the writing occasionally approaching something that almost feels like reading something from a stream of consciousness exercise in a writing course. It was only in the middle of the second of the rather long chapters that things clicked and things started working for me. It was still hard, but by then the story had gotten into gear and that peculiar writing style started adding to it instead of distracting from it...
In the world of the year 2030, L.A. has almost sunken into the waves of the pacific following the Big Quake, genetic engineering has progressed to the point where escorts and soldiers are produced through genetic recombination, and everyone and his dog carries an implant that directly interfaces the brain and the Net. The protagonist, Karl, who has worked for a special agency under DOJ supervision in the past but has enjoyed the rural life of a farmer after dropping out of the service 5 years ago after an incident, is called into service again. The reason for this is an assignment at which half a dozen of that agencies best agents have already failed terminally, and his special talent is needed: Due to freak of nature, Karl has the ability to read the mind of the people and animals he touches.
What looks like a rehash of some standard issue ideas of Science Fiction quickly develops into something more. D. W. St. John manages to raise a handful of interesting problems embedded into a bleak but fleshed out future world and an action packed plot. And although I would have liked the characters of both the hero and many of the people he meets to be deeper and more detailed, the triangle of problems, plots, and people keeps the tension up until an end that is satisfying though slightly too predictable for my taste.
"Sisters of Glass" is not a light read by any stretch of the imagination, but it provides a lot of food for thought packaged up in a tense plot and a nice amount of action, and it is complex enough to warrant a re-read in the not too distant future. I found it well worth the effort it cost me to get into it.
2003-03-09
David Weber: Mutineers' Moon
The basic scaffolding for the story is rather similar to that of "The Apocalypse Troll", but David Weber manages to mix up the usual ingredients: military action, a kinda-sorta first contact, a story line split to show both sides of the conflict, and the developing romance between a man from today's military and a woman from a technologically advanced culture, to produce something that is sufficiently gripping and different that the structural similarities between the two books didn't bother me all that much.
For a variety of reasons I liked "Mutineers' Moon" even better than "The Apocalypse Troll". Although the romance worked rather well in _Troll_, toning it down and giving the military action as well as the story arc of the bad guys more room made the thing more energetic and lively, and a faster paced, more balanced read. And I admit that while I love first contact stories like the one that is part of _Troll_, I'm also a sucker for preposterous ideas done well, and while travelling backwards in time is a good shot, the basic premise of _Moon_ trumps it in that respect, at least for me:
What if Earth's moon isn't a ball of dead rock, and neither is it made of green cheese, but it's an alien spaceship? All of it: a ship of the line of an ancient space empire's fleet, stranded in the orbit around Earth by the last orders of its captain, its former crew, 200.000 strong and divided by a mutiny, marooned on earth for the same 50 millenia. But now the ship must act to end the conflict, and an open confrontation to vanquish the mutineers is the only viable way...
If you liked _Troll_, chances are you'll like _Moon_, and the inverse is likely true as well.
But whatever the case may be, do yourself a favour and go out and read D. W. St. John's "Sisters of Glass"! Now! That book was a bitch to get into, but boy does it blow me out of the water. It's the first book from Baen that has landed on my must-read-again list. More about it next weekend when I'm back from my business trip...
PS: there is a personal post or two that struggle to get out, but my head is full of job and business things right now. But I'll pack the shlepptop for the trip, and see if a lonely hotel night or two don't make them come out...
2003-03-05
David Weber: The Apocalypse Troll
I've finished that book a week ago and had been meaning to write about it ever since, but between lots of work, playing Morrowind, and reading "Mutineers' Moon", another book written by David Weber, I just didn't find the time.
Several centuries in the future, mankind is locked in a deadly, decades long war with the Kangas, a xenophobic alien species possessing advanced bioengineering technology which it has used in the past to wipe out any species that it has encountered and deemed a threat, however small, to its existence. Nevertheless, humanity has managed to use its toolbuilding and technological tinkering skills to beat the Kanga empire back to three planets, when the cornered aliens mount one last, desparate attempt to beat mankind - in its own past...
Now, military SF is not my favorite sub-genre of Science Fiction, but I love first contact stories, especially when the author manages to wring some humour from the cultural clash, and David Weber does all of that rather well. The story starts with a jump backwards in time (and he even manages to pull that one off in a reasonable manner), it finishes with a satisfying end, and it packs some hefty military action, humour, and romance in between.
Except for the all too unlikely positive characterizations of the president of the US as well as several other political, military, and secret service leaders, I can't find much fault with it. (I just don't buy the idea that so many people can rise to that much power and still manage to be all out reasonable, decent, upright guys.) The fact that I'm currently busy reading another book of his should tell you that it can't be too bad. In fact that one's recommended reading.
2003-03-03
The Joys of Legislature
For a few years now the number of really bad, idiotic, oppressive laws proposed and/or enacted has been on a steep rise worldwide, with the US as ever taking the lead. Not only is there the DMCA, the PATRIOT act, and a host of other stuff as well as HF0341, that utterly braindead proposal to remove protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation in Minnesota. No, there is also a new proposal from the DOJ, an addendum to the PATRIOT act as it were, called "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003", and it makes for grim reading.
Under the DSEA2003, apparently, if you order a book from Amazon.com and fail to pay state tax, the SSL session with Amazon supports a five year felony for what essentially amounts to an offense worth about 5 bucks, because you used cryptography during the commision of a federal felony. Sounds like fun, no?
[Sorry about that, I just needed to vent...]
2003-03-02
Lois McMaster Bujold: The Mountains of Mourning
"The Mountains of Mourning" is part of Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" series of books dealing mostly with the life of Miles Vorkosigan, the son of Cordelia Naismith and Lord Aral Vorkosigan, who were living on the opposite sides of a war. Born with the aftereffects of an attempt at his father's life, which leave him with brittle bones and stunted growth, Miles still carves out his life in the military service. In "Mountains of Mourning", his father tasks him with resolving the murder of a child in a primitive tribe living in a remote mountain area...
What sounds like a promising plot in an interesting world is in fact one of the most boring books I have ever read. While Miles, who has to integrate his ambitions and shortcomings, sounds like an interesting character, and while the world, basically a pseudo-feudal system set in a space faring universe, holds some promise to be an interesting backdrop, both completely failed to touch me. Consequently, the book was, at least for me, an utter failure at enticing me to buy and read more of the Vorkosigan saga.
To be fair, the book is not an abysmal failure as such like, say, that godawful modern day continuation of the Artus/Merlin saga by Deepak Chopra, the title of which has mercifully escaped my memory, but I can't in good conscience recommend it unless you're really, really, really bored. Instead, I'll note that like a certain someone, she lives in Minneapolis, MN, and I have to say that if you feel like reading something written by a Minneapolitan, go read Layne's blog - her writing is better by heaps and bounds than what I found between the covers of that book, and I mean that.
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