lederhosen

My paper has been accepted for NTTS in Brussels for March, so I'll be overseas in ARGH ONLY TWO MONTHS AWAY BETTER RENEW PASSPORTS! and travelling on via Iceland, UK, and USA as part of Rey's 50th-birthday holiday trip.

We saw "The Imitation Game" yesterday. I had mixed feelings about it...( Read more... )

It's not quite six months since we were a two-dog household, and now they're both gone. We took Basil to the vet just last Thursday and he was surprised by how well Basil was looking, but warned us that it probably wouldn't last.

( Read more... )

He was so very different from Dog-Or. Dog-Or was an uncomplicated dog who loved everybody and assumed they loved him back (mostly correctly). Basil had a lot of defensive behaviours, he bit all of us at least once, and he was cautious about us - he would give my hand a very polite little lick when he was feeling friendly. When you called him, he'd stop to think about whether he really wanted to come. (Baths: no thank you.) But it was clear he liked being around us, and not just at mealtimes; when Rey was out he'd camp by the door waiting for her to come home.

I wish I knew where he came from before the Lost Dog's Home, whether there's somebody out there wondering whatever became of their little black-and-white borglie. We only got the last quarter of the story, but we did what we could with it.

Committing these things to memory:

A white-tipped tail, quite out of proportion to its owner, standing high above his head when happy, waving as if he's trying to hail a taxi.

Pointed ears, one straight, one folded, twitching at the mention of his name.

The rituals of Wanting Something. The plaintive eyes, head slightly cocked, showing off those ears to best advantage. The small polite lick on my hand, like a gentleman offering his card. The offered paw, a preamble to the rollover and the belly. The frantic circles at feeding time and the leap-thump-leap-thump as he overcompensates for the shortness of his legs.

The appetite, gulping down food unchewed before it can be taken away.

The shedding. So much fur, finding its way into everything.

The mind, too sharp by half, that always knows what we're up to.

The fears. Alarm at loud noises, the tail tucked down between his legs as cars drive by. The jealousy over food and the reflexive snarl when suddenly woken - and the apology afterwards. The dog who crept into a dark cupboard on his first day with us and sat there so quietly that we looked there twice and missed him; the dog who sneaks under our bed at night like a little ninja.

The sore spots that we never understood but eventually learned to avoid.

The delight every day when we come home, sniffing our legs to find out where we've been and who we've seen, tail lashing hard enough to hit himself in the face.

And now, counting cans and wondering if the dogfood will outlast the dog. Oh, little fellow, I wish you were staying with us.

Thanks to everyone who offered their sympathy; I won't reply individually to everybody, but I do feel loved, and it helps a lot.

Last year Rey and I saw "The Sapphires", a movie about four female Aboriginal singers and their dissolute Irish manager.

In that order. Chris O'Dowd does have an important role in the story and he gets a fair bit of screen time, but it is very much "Aboriginal girl group and their manager". With the "Aboriginal" bit being an important part of it all.

Here is an interesting comparison of the Australian and US DVD covers...

is still setting an example to authors by receiving reader criticism with the quiet calm and grace for which she is so justly renowned.

My uncle mentioned a line from James McAuley a while back. It resonated with me, and I just got around to looking up the rest of the poem. An excerpt:

People do what they can; they were good people,
They cared for us and loved us. Once they stood
Tall in my childhood as the school, the steeple
How can I judge without ingratitude?

Judgement is simply trying to reject
A part of what we are because it hurts.
The living cannot call the dead collect;
They won't accept the charge, and it reverts.

FOR SCIENCE.

"These studies in python behaviour were possible after these snakes ate the radiocollared possums we were radiotracking "

"We scaled the cryogenic pods around barbie dolls because the boss wanted one for his desk. "

"N was reduced to save my marriage. "

"the eppendorf tubes were "shaken like a polaroid picture" until that part of the song ended"

And so many more.

Because if I see one more person trotting out the old "how come the Mayans couldn't predict their own extinction" chestnut, I'm going to get cranky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_peoples

"There are an estimated 7 million Maya living in [southern Mexico/northern Central America] at the start of the 21st century. Maya of Guatemala, southern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras have managed to maintain substantial remnants of their ancient cultural heritage. Some are quite integrated into the majority hispanicized Mestizo cultures of the nations in which they reside, while others continue a more traditional culturally distinct life, often speaking one of the Maya languages as a primary language."

I haven't posted about the Sandy Hook thing because I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said by countless others in the last few days (and the time before this, and the time before that...)

But this story, about a girl who survived by playing dead among the bodies of her friends, managed to piss me off:

Pastor Jim Solomon told ABC News: "She ran out of the school building covered from head to toe with blood and the first thing she said to her mom was, 'Mommy, I'm OK but all my friends are dead."

"Somehow in that moment, by God's grace, [she] was able to act as she was already deceased... How at 6 and a half years old can you be that smart, that brave? I think it's impossible outside of divine intervention. She has wisdom beyond her years."

I'm used to this whole weird twisted thing where if a disaster doesn't kill quite as many people as it might have, God-of-speaker's-choice gets credit for the ones who survived, instead of being held responsible for the ones who didn't (or for the memories that kid is going to carry for the rest of her life). It's kinda like one of those private-public partnerships where the profits are privatised and the losses are dumped on the taxpayer.

But I'm infuriated by the attitude that a six-year-old girl couldn't possibly have been smart enough to do this of her own accord. Kids can be pretty resourceful! She's already suffered a horrendous loss, do we really have to rob her of the credit for using her wits to keep herself alive?