The Wauchula Woods Accord: "The degree to which we humans will finally stop abusing other creatures and, for that matter, one another, will ultimately be measured by the degree to which we come to understand how integral a part of us all other creatures actually are."--Charles Siebert

Sentimentality higher than predicted, but historical content, research, intuitive observation and sensitivity (which is not to be confused with sentimentality) are all present and accounted for. Focuses on the mistreatment-by-domestication of higher primates, but the overall message is clear. Sadly, I think that he's unlikely to sway anyone who holds an opposing view, as he will probably find that the majority of his audience comes directly from the chorus.

This entry was originally posted at http://ivymcallister.dreamwidth.org/. LJers who don't have DW accounts can still comment there via OpenID.

If you spoke for a particular book, books, or magazines, they were mailed this afternoon. If I was going to give you your books at Arisia, I sent them by post today. However, I did *not* mail the unclaimed books to the person who was interested in them. The amount of lifting and carrying I can do is still limited, so those will have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday.

Shipping charges for all packages were negligible--I won't be sending any PayPal requests. Consider it a late Christmas gift, or something. As long as you get some enjoyment from them, it's all for good.

I will be posting another book list shortly, including a fascinating Jackson Pollock biography, Such Desperate Joy. Since I wrote some copy for this one, the cover is missing, as is the blank page that was just before the back cover. (The print and layout people were never concerned with the condition of the book--just their jobs. They often wrote notes in the books instead of on post-its.) Anyway, the overall condition is really quite good, save the absent cover. I highly recommend it. (I am no great fan of Pollock's work, so that's saying something.)

As you might have noticed, I've been organizing/weeding my books and moving them to the new shelves. As I move them, I'm making sure they're in my library database, Books. Books is an open source library database for MacOS X, and I fucking *love* it--particularly the new comic book plug-in. It also has plug-ins that allow you to import (or export) your data from other library databases, like LibaryThing, or book-lover sites like BookMooch.

Another bonus--I didn't have to buy a bar code reader in order for it to scan my books. It uses your Mac's built-in iSight camera and reads the ISBN right off the cover. (I've been using it for quite a while, and it hasn't misread one, yet.)

I made a decent donation to the developer, which was still less than I would have paid for other software and a bar code reader.

In short, if you're running OS X and you need a kick-ass library database but you don't want to pay big $ *or* shell out extra for a bar code reader, Books is perfect.

This is incredibly easy and fantastically rewarding. Just make sure you have an appropriately sized crockpot, bowl, and saucer, or you will be frustrated. (Or re-size the recipe for a larger crock.) Half the work is finding the cookware--the rest is cake. (Or pudding, in this case.)

If you do not have at least 6oz of leftover panettone in your kitchen *right now*, go to the store and buy one that is 6oz or larger. They're usually on sale at this point--so buy two. You will not regret it. (You should also make sure you have--or have access to--a small crock pot. A 2-3 qt model should do.) While you're at the grocery, make sure you also have at least:

abt 2 Tablespoons butter
*Slightly* less than 1/2 cup milk
*Slightly* less than 1/2 cup light cream (or half-and-half)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
a bit of sugar (to sprinkle on at the end)
1 oz golden raisins
1 oz dried apricots, chopped (The moist kind, not the thoroughly dehydrated and crispy variety.)
2 Tablespoons apricot preserves
2 Tablespoons brandy
(And don't forget the 6+oz pannettone!)

First, put the apricots and raisins in a bowl and let them soak in the 2 T brandy while you prepare the rest of the pudding. Also, put some water on to boil--enough to fill your crock about halfway.

Find a saucer that fits in the bottom of your crock. Turn it upside down and place it in the crock. Add enough hot (not boiling!) water to just cover the saucer, and turn the crock on High.

Find an oven-proof 2 1/2 cup bowl or dish that fits in your crock. (It should be at least 2 inches deep.) Grease the bowl with about 1/3 of the butter.

Slice the panettone into slices about 3/4 of an inch thick, or so. Spread the remaining butter on the slices (don't go crazy with it), and then spread on the apricot preserves.

Cut each slice into four smaller pieces and layer them in the oven-proof bowl. Scatter the apricots and raisins between the layers.

Whisk together the egg, milk, cream, vanilla, and any brandy that didn't soak into the fruit. Pour evenly over the panettone and gently press the bread down into the liquid.

Cover the top of the oven-proof bowl with foil and set it in the crock on top of the inverted saucer. Using the water you put to boil, pour enough in the crock that it comes about halfway up the sides of the oven-proof bowl.

Put the lid on the crock (which should be on High by now) and cook for 3-5 hours, or until set. Remove from crock (carefully!), remove foil, sprinkle the top with sugar (if desired) and serve with whipped cream.

Experience bliss.

(Does not re-heat well.)

(Forgot--recipe from Slow Cooking For Yourself by Catherine Atkinson. I picked it up in London this past summer, and it's fantastic. Oh, and most of the weights and measures are given in both US and UK standards.)

The three Torchwood novels I pre-ordered *months* ago (from Amazon) have finally arrived! A Christmas gift for my mother was in the same shipment, which means I am only waiting on three more items and all my mail-ordered gifts are safe and sound.

All I want to do for the rest of the day is read, but I have to box up some more stuff in preparation for The Floorening next week. I think I'll fill a couple boxes, then read a book, rinse, and repeat. (It might sound like I won't accomplish much, but believe me when I say that I read very, very quickly. And Torchwood tie-ins aren't exactly challenging.)

So--coffee, then boxes, then books.

A timeline of scifi inventions from 1600 to the present, arranged by publication date and, where possible, linked to show the actual (or similar) device.

Alas--no bowel disruptor. (See "Weapons.")

(Via supergee.)

Peter Berg will direct yet another Dune. (Well, he will. Once the strike is over and there's a script, anyway.)

...when asked about the scale of the film, (Berg) simply replied, “big big big.”

Wow. How can I resist.

(Via scifiwire.)

One of the more interesting, useful lists of common (and not-so-common) errors in English. This one gets a bookmark in my Reference folder.

Via supergee.

Found this fascinating little list on my Facebook home page.

Top Books in the South Jersey network.

1. The Bible
2. Harry Potter
3. Catcher In The Rye
4. To Kill A Mockingbird
5. The Lovely Bones

Hilarious.

For those of you who have not yet read it... Scott Adams' God's Debris.

Visit SeussVille.com and send the ever-engaging Cat in the Hat a 50th Birthday eCard. It's just a couple clicks, and for every card sent, a book will be donated to a child in need.

And so many kids need books. They need them like they need air, they deserve them the way they deserve love and they want them the way they want someone to read *to* them sometimes, even when they're able to read for themselves.

Kids need books.

Home On the Strange: The Potter Strip.

Spent the day doing laundry and trying to finalize the writing project I've been hacking away at for the past couple months. New work situation officially starts on Thursday, which I'm quite looking forward to. Already have lunch plans with my work husband for Friday (Yay!) but I know the rest of the day will probably be spent on the pre-POS inventory (Boo). Still in all, things seem to be chugging along.

On a completely unrelated note...

Dresden Files is growing on me, but still needs much to be desired. The series should be able to stand on its own, but even allowing for the limitations of the medium, I don't think it will even come *close* to holding a candle to the books. (If I hadn't started reading them, I doubt I'd have bothered watching the second episode.)

Hyperdrive is kinda cute. It's definitely growing on me.

Heroes still annoys the shit out of me in exactly the same way that Roswell did and B5 didn't.

House left me feeling vaguely unfulfilled tonight, but it left a far better taste in my mouth than that hideous piece of juvenile self-insertion Mary Sue fan fiction we were subjected to last week.

Decided to view An Unreasonable Man last night while it's available on OnDemand, and we ended up watching it twice. I doubt that it will change my voting habits, but it was definitely worth watching. Unfortunately, it prompted me to buy Unsafe At Any Speed, and I barely have time or space for the books I already have in my must-read pile. (Especially since three of my BookMooch books arrived over the weekend.)

And with that, (and when this rerun of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! is over) I'm going to try to get some sleep.

I love it when a book that I expect to be nothing more than low-rent beach reading actually manages to surprise me. Case in point: Helen Fielding's Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination.

I admit it--I bought this one figuring it would be little better than her other non-Bridget books in which the heroines are Bridget clones in all but name and job description. While the writing style is just as engaging as you'd expect, I'm pleased to say that the main character is, in fact, NOT a Bridget clone. She's not *perfect*, to be sure, but she's not the Bridget-brand of ditzy, get-lucky fuckup.

One of the best bits has to be Olivia's list of rules, which I'm going to set down here because I think some of y'all might get a kick out of them, as they Don't Suck. :P
--------------------------------------------

Rules for Living by Olivia Joules

1.) Never panic. Stop, breathe, think.
2.) No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.
3.) Never change haircut or color before an important event.
4.) Nothing is either as bad or as good as it seems.
5.) Do as you would be done by, e.g., thou shalt not kill.
6.) It is better to buy one expensive thing that you really like than several cheap things that you only quite like.
7.) Hardly anything matters: if you get upset, ask yourself, "Does it really matter?"
8.) The key to success lies in how you pick yourself up from failure.
9.) Be honest and kind.
10.) Only buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance.
11.) Trust your instincts, not your imagination.
12.) When overwhelmed by disaster, check if it's really a disaster by doing the following: (a) think, "Oh, fuck it," (b) look on the bright side and, if that doesn't work, look on the funny side.
If neither of the above works then maybe it is a disaster, so turn to items 1 and 4.
13.) Don't expect the world to be safe or life to be fair.
14.) Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
15.) Don't regret anything. Remember there wasn't anything else that could have happened, given who you were and the state of the world at that moment. The only thing you can change is the present, so learn from the past.

Who ya gonna sue? (Stupidest lawsuit since some boob was offended by Janet Jackson's.)

Addition: NY Daily News reports on the lawsuits surrounding falsified memoir.

(Via supergee & dsgood.)

Still haven't really packed much of anything, as cannot decide exactly what to take. Am probably going to end up trying things on until kit_kallisti makes me leave the bedroom so she can get some sleep. :P

Hardly took any jeans last time, but they *are* my uniform-of-choice, so I think I'll go with instinct. Jeans it is.

(At least a couple.)

Last time, I ended up with one suitcase and one carry-on/carpet bag filled entirely with toiletries. (And half of *those* were hair products. Woman cannot maintain bounce and shine on shampoo and conditioner alone. :P) This year, I'm hoping to narrow it down to just the suitcase.

I never said I was being realistic. :)

Got a couple of books at B&N the other night: the new Liz Hand, a very pretty-yet-cheap edition of Persuasion (Austen) and a huge book of crossword puzzles for the ride. TBD and I'll be sharing the driving, thank goodness. Last time I went on this particular trip, I'd only been dating TBD for a month or so, and he wasn't about to test my otherwise unknown driving abilities in a rental car with his name on it. *grins* I've since proven my vehicle-handling abilities to his satisfaction, so now we share the driving on long trips.

God, I really should try to pack.

Squipped from triskaidekafile:


Can we say "obsessed"?
That's okay...
I'm crazy too.


Do you grok?
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Funny that I came up with this result--I have not read it since high school. Guess enough stuck with me that I could answer appropriately...

~`~Ivy~,~

This one actually looks like fun, but I am so tired it's not even funny. Will try, though. Squipped from mysticknyght:

1. Which book are you currently reading?
A couple things at once, as always. Primarily re-reading Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic by Paul Fussell. I mentioned it in another post, so I will not go into details.

2. What book did you read last?
Gracefully Insane, a very reasonable look at the rise and fall of the not-quite-infamous McLean Psychiatric Hospital.

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