Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. These are the words given to me by redbrunja:

I hope your day is the greatest, b3n-chan!

They're making a movie of The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff! The idea got a great reception at Cannes!

(Thanks to sovay for the tip!)

Probably "Man in the Mirror." But "Billie Jean," with that slippery little riff (organ, maybe?), is that one that keeps earworming me.

I am full of fail - it's almost the next day where you are, I think!

This here, I mean.

(OK, it's for a crossover RPG, I guess. Still, my brain hurts.)

(I found it while I was trying to get a more solid picture in my mind after reading lady_ganesh's recent opus. Bear in mind that I have never seen Weiß Kreuz ... but I have actually read Gravitation.)

Fried ham, fried ham, cheese and baloney,
And after the macaroni,
We'll have pickles, onions, and pretzels -
And then we'll have some more fried ham!
FRIED HAM FRIED HAM FRIED HA-AM !!!

    - traditional Scout camp ditty

So the Mr. celebrated Father's Day by going down to the farmer's market on his ownsome (I was glued to my work laptop, testing some systems that had to be successfully "failed over" to back-up in time for work tomorrow because of power system issues at the main data center) and coming back with fresh beefsteak tomatoes, basil, - and sugar-cured fresh ham. Which he proceeded to fry up and turn into panini-ish sandwiches of ham, cheese (cheddar for him, campo de montalban for me), tomatoe, and basil leaves. MMMMmM!

Via inkstone on Dreamwidth:

... TOKYOPOP lost the license to Samurai Deeper Kyo! But that explains why volume 35 has been impossible to find, no matter what Amazon says. I can't believe it though -- there are only 4 volumes left! (Never mind the fact that SDK is supposedly one of their better sellers. This can't bode well for TP if they lost the SDK license and the final English volume of Furuba is released soon.) On the other hand, it also appears that Del Rey has the license to the final 4 volumes and if the listing for volume 35 is accurate, they'll be released in double-sized volumes. Let's hope it's true. That'll be imminently sad if SDK ends its English run with only 4 volumes to go!

You can take a look at the Delray catalog listing here.

It is good to hand down the important things in life to the next generation.

I just introduced The Young Lady to They Fight Crime.

(The impulse was inspired, I should add, by oyceter's recent book review.)

I'm honored but puzzled to discover that I am Ursula LeGuin.

You too can discover which fantasy author you are ... .

(I could have given more romantic, less cynical answers on some of those questions if the romantic choices hadn't been so completely extreme!)

From artillie:

1. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper on their LiveJournal.
2. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!.
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

I actually had a date with the Mr. last night. On a weeknight, too! He had tickets to Zemer Chai, a Jewish choir in which the wife of one of his former bosses sings, and another colleague is a supporter of the group. He'd meant to go with yet another colleague who's into the group (they saw it together last year too) but the other guy couldn't go, so he took me.   XD

This is basically a very good U.S./European-style mixed choir that focuses on traditional European Jewish music from both the Ashkenazi (German/Polish/Russian etc.) and and Sephardi (Italian/Spanish/Turkish) traditions, with some Israeli songs thrown in for good measure. It's generally very melodic and very tightly, elaborately arranged (examples: here and here). In some ways, this was the very antithesis of the Idan Raichel concert I took in with smillaraaq earlier this spring.

I hope your day is simply splendid and completely satisfying!

Hmmm, I could swear there was an earlier version of this some year or other, but blessed if I can remember where or when ... .

Yes, I'm still reading Bleach, even though I haven't bothered to write it up for some time. Most of it has become pretty formulaic, with the good guys having to beat up on piles of more- and more-badass bad guys. There have only been a few scenes that would have been worth writing up: the Orihime-Rangiku girl-talk confessional, and Yumichika's reaction to Ikkakku's fight with Edrad Leones (lower left panel; be still, my shippy little heart!), and some of the Vizard stuff.

Then along comes this volume, with much, much awesomeness. The trouble is, I have seen people's complaints about things that happen further along. Oh Kubo-sensei, you nasty tease ... you're just toying with me, aren't you?

The rest is going under a cut - there's not much to say about the plot that won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't been keeping up.

This is surprisingly addicting, even though I can't understand much more than the character's names and a very few words (like onna - "woman"):

Hakkai (well, Gonou in these scenes) is completely adorable, and the scene where he's telling his story to Gojyo is quite close to the manga, I think - complete with Gojyo holding up his pinkie yakuza-style to mean a woman when he asks about the person Gonou has lost.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

One of the temple pieces snapped clean through, right up next to the hinge.

The Mr. is trying to superglue them, but I don't hold out much hope. It's a very small surface area.

I am wearing my old glasses ... I can feel an eyestrain headache coming on already.

To me, one of the strangest things about the reactions of some of the SF&F fans to Racefail (one summary) and Mammothfail (one summary) is their complete lack of willingness to try to put themselves in the shoes of the fans of color who have been hurt and angered by these incidents.

Think about it: we're talking fans of a genre that considers it a pleasure to read or watch works that put the reader into the minds of fantastic or alien creatures. Whether you're talking about Vulcans, Kzinti, and Atevi, or or elves, dwarves, and youkai, science fiction and fantasy readers like to get inside different types of minds.

Or at least, they say they do. But if that is the case, why do some of them find it so hard to get inside the heads of members of their own species who happen to have a different life-experience? If you're going to get involved and excited about the troubles and tribulations of fictional beings, the least you could do would be to make the same effort with your fellow human beings in this world we share - and not greet each exclamation of pain and dismay with "I don't see why that's a problem" or "It's just a story - stop whining."

Here are some stories to get you started. Some of them may be familiar, but perhaps others of them may be new to you:

• Stories of Native American children and parents, and their encounters with the usual U.S. school curriculum and "classic" U.S. children's books, among other things
• Many, many stories by people of color the world over are reviewed and tagged for you at 50books_poc, so that if SF is your passion, you can find that, and so on.
• The Remyth Project, in which people of color take back the myths that other groups have appropriated and use them creatively.
• The justly famous essay Shame, in which African American writer Pam Noles takes us back to her fantasy- and SF-loving childhood.
• I Didn’t Dream of Dragons, in which the Indian-born author remembers, with love and pain, the effect of reading Western mainstream fantasy during her childhood.

And throughout the day today, at the newly created community Fans of Color United, you'll find many more stories posted.

Stories are important. Stories, in fact, are life. Read. Learn. Grow.

All sorts of crud posted up there, and not one diagram of the lower decks of a PT boat! Honestly!