NaBloPoMo comes to an end

I hope NaBloPoMo wasn’t too boring chez viscousplatypus.

Mostly I was doing this as an exercise in writing; in college there was a lot of forcing oneself to write, whether it was because there was a workshop the next day or just to get the ideas flowing. I like to think I’m getting in the groove. I’d like to be a writer again.
So, I hope that NaBloPoMo lives on in my heart. Or my blog. Whatever. I hope to keep posting regularly, if not daily. Please feel free to leave angry comments if you feel I’m neglecting you.

In good news I’m (kind of) taking next week off from my main job at the county; I’ll be doing some stuff at home, but I need to chill and spend some time thinking about what I want to be when I grow up.

Thanks for reading.

When technology transfer goes awry

I’m all for technology transfer. Often a discovery, technical, mechanical, or otherwise, especially when it is simple and elegant, can be used in many applications.

There is a sex/technology writer/educator/blogger/vlogger I like named Violet Blue (not always SFW). She has a regular column for the San Francisco Chronicle, and she’s recently published a round-up of the year’s strangest and most horrifying sex toys. I was looking over the article with a friend over beers and chips and we were intrigued by several that just seemed…ill-conceived. One of them is called…

…no, I can’t say it.

If this thing came at you, vibrating (or oscillating, as the manufacturer insists), with it’s multiple, interchangeable alien heads and its weird 1980s She-Ra doll armor-colored plastic, would you

a) scream with (sexual) excitement

b) scream with terror

or

c) expect to get a nice tooth polish and gum massage

This item is endorsed by Dr. Ruth, who pronounces its name very elegantly. “ERRRRRROS-CILLATOR.”

I sent a link to the site to a male friend and he said that “it looks like a car part web site” and that one can “go to any Machinist site and you get diagramatic animated images like this.” He added, “I’m a professional man so you can quote me as an expert.”

There you have it. This…thing…was clearly invented by people with penises. Probably dentists. They already had the technology.

Maybe it’s awesome. Who knows. I’m not planning to shell out the $130 to find out.

PS: That thing with the black whiskers? It’s called the French Legionnaire’s Moustache®

D:

Ozark Cousins

One of my favorite blogs of late is by a fellow named Craig, who writes Wheezy Waiter. (You’ll find it in the sidebar.) A former waiter/musician and now video editor/musician, Craig and some friends wrote, recorded, and filmed an indie concept album/film combo called Ozark Cousins. The whole album is available free for download, and the film has just gone up in parts on YouTube.

Some sample Wheezy Waiter:

Indie will eat itself

When I was first coming up with new categories for my blog, I assigned all things hipsterish to a category called “Unironic hipsterism.”

Last night I was browsing through very small array, a side project/blog of Dorothy Gambrell, she who makes Cat and Girl and whom I generally adore. As well as having all sorts of delightful graphs and charts and other graphic silliness, there is a circa 2004 drawing called “Indie Will Eat Itself.”

I think that’s a better category name. So I’m going with it.

You Can Never Reread (Again)?

For the Awesome Ladies Bookclub, this month’s book is Voyage of the Narwhal. It’s quite good so far. But anytime I read a book about ships, I always zone back in on one of my favorite books of all time: True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi. Well-to-do girl falls in with pirates on a voyage from Britain to America in the late 1800s. My dream as an 11-year-old.

I haven’t read this book since I was at least that age, and while I still have a copy, I’m kind of afraid to go back. I know the writing won’t be as good as I remember it, the situations as harrowing as I recall. I’m content to keep the memory of it, I think.

What books did/do you love and are afraid to reread for fear of being disappointed?

Bones

I don’t watch a lot of TV. I usually watch things that friends turn me on to—not usually things my parents turn me on to. (You’d think I’d know better, as I already had to watch a lot of Doctor Quinn back in the day with my mom.)

But, this show is different. I can’t quite figure out why. It’s like CSI, but not. The show is called Bones, and it’s loosely based on the crime novels of Kathy Reichs, who is also a forensic anthropologist (i.e., she looks at bones to find cause of death) in real life. Reichs’ protagonist is Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, the brilliant, weird daughter of career criminals. On the show, the character of Brennan (played by Emily Deschanel, who looks a lot like her mom and is a better actress than her sister, in my opinion) is in turn based on Reichs, and is herself a crime writer and forensic anthropologist. In at least one episode the protagonist of her books is named as, yes, Kathy Reichs.

This seems silly and derivative, and it is. And the show has all the usual prime-time seriousness paired with humor and romance between main characters (it’s Fox’s answer to CSI and Law & Order, and Brennan is of course a member of a crack team including a tissue expert, a nerdy grad student, a soil expert/entomologist/conspiracy theorist who is also the sole heir of a rich-beyond-imagining research group, an artist specializing in facial reconstruction and video scrubbing, a former-sniper FBI agent, etc.). So I really, really don’t know why I like it so much. It might be the realistic gore, or the actually correct-ish sounding science, or the fact that the protagonist is just so damn, well, anthropological. Deschanel pulls off the kooky-brilliant-awkward-yet-gorgeous thing quite well, and there’s just something good about the show. Je ne sais quoi.

So, if you’re looking for a slightly suspenseful, pretty funny, pretty smart show to keep you entertained as we in the northern hemisphere enter winter, give Bones a look-see. I’m currently about 2/3 of the way through season two from the internets on DVD and I think I’ll continue to download watch through the current third season.

Pink.

My grandma likes pink. She’s 96. She’s usually chilly, so I’m making her a shrug for Christmas.

Cheers

Cheers to traveling ORGers. Cheers to insects, evolutionary biology, and whiskey. Cheers to laughter. Cheers to winter. Cheers to friends.

Carb coma and cars, and thanks

My parents arrived yesterday evening and we had Thanksgiving today. I am very full of stuffing (stuffin muffins, made in a muffin pan) and other delights. My parents are extremely good people. I have grown to appreciate them more as I get older.

Additional developments: Those of you who know me in The Deuce know of my car/driving troubles. Long story short, they were going to be “over” this week, but now they will be over after Christmas. Suggestions as to ways to entertain myself on the 11+ hours of train riding to Harrisburg, PA (plus the potential 2 hour Amtrak shuttle ride from Ann Arbor to Toledo), the weekend before Baby Jee shows up would be greatly appreciated.

For all the poor people who have hauled my sorry ass around in their cars since March, my thanks to you. I am going to try to take the bus as much as possible this next month. I owe you all crocheted goods or cookies.

Happy Thanksgiving.