Sage Autumn's Friends
(Latest entries) (Calendar) (Latest friends) (User info)
Navigate: (Previous 20 friends)
Monday, November 16, 2009
Downloading the first two episodes of the new version of The Prisoner.
Really, really hoping that AMC doesn't fuck it up.
Also, Rome Girl has never seen the original Prisoner - so if they keep it to the formula of the original it will be interesting to see when and where she picks up what's really going on.
9:14AM
Sorry if this has already been posted but I'm at work and have limited Internet access and kinda need the info asap. Please forgive me :) I'm on the pill (trivora) and I've been sick for the past week or two with a stomachy flu (throwing up, frequent bathroom visits), so I pretty much stopped taking the pill since I figured there was no point if it was just going to leave my body before it could get absorbed or whatever. Anyways, my question is since I was only 3 days into my new pack, can I just start off where I left off at or are those 3 days really that important? And also just to double check, I don't want any scares lol, it won't be effective again for a week, right?
Thank you guys so much and sorry again if this is all redundant to you!!!!
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
...but still not nearly as outrageous as the way he kneels before the bankers. If he's this much of a subservient little cocklicker in public, just imagine what he's like behind closed doors.
From Natasha at Open Left, Pregnancy: Health and Human Rights.
I remember the day in 1997 when I listened to my doctor tell me that I had a very large ovarian cyst, also, that I was likely to have a miscarriage. She said it was good that my body seemed to be taking care of things on its own, because the cyst could rupture and hemorrhage and they couldn't operate if I was pregnant because it was a Catholic hospital.
My doctor wasn't mean about it, she just couldn't give me this operation that she'd told me about a minute previous I needed to avert a threat to my life...
Opponents of abortion like to center their arguments around the fetus and talk about whether it's a person. Which basically means to me that they don't think women are people with the basic right to determine the conditions of their lives and what will happen to their bodies, who can be forced to suffer or die because it will make someone else feel better...
If a woman's right to decide that she just can't handle this ridiculous level of risk at a given time, or that her body simply can't take anymore, or that she can't outlast the depression it may trigger, is regarded as irrelevant, then no one really has any inalienable rights at all.
If you're a Democrat who doesn't get that all restrictions on abortion are human rights violations, we aren't on the same team. Good reading. I highly recommend Natasha's piece, as well as all the pieces she links to, particularly Quixote's piece over at Shakesville. For anyone who hasn't ever really thought about the real-world consequences for women - who, despite popular belief, ARE actually PEOPLE - of the continued assault on a woman's right to bodily automony, start with Quixote's piece, then head over to RH Reality Check. For those who are unaware, Stupak-Pitts goes further than that evil Hyde amendment. Hyde stops any federal money from funding (legal) abortions, which directly imperils poor women on Medicaid who need a (legal) abortion. Stupak-Pitts takes it further, and stops any insurance company accepting a federal subsidy, or a woman using federal money to supplement private insurance, from funding (legal) abortion. That means that if my private insurance company, HMSA-a-subsidiary-of-BCBS, covers (legal) abortions, they can't accept any federal funding for supplements for the poor and underinsured, and continue to cover (legal) abortion procedures. Any insurance plan which covers abortions must be paid for ONLY with money from premiums. Anyone who has worked in any kind of bookkeeping or billing job knows how much paperwork that will require, and how loathe a for-profit insurance industry will be to actually put in the time, money, and effort to keep (legal) abortion coverage available. In practical-speak, Stupak-Pitts just outlawed insurance coverage for (legal) abortions. Oh, and that "health care" bill? Doesn't require insurers to cover routine reproductive care such as annual gynecological exams, pap smears, STI testing and treatment, contraception, voluntary sterilization, or counseling. But you can be damn sure that Viagra will be only $5 per pill. 64 Democrats voted yes on the Stupak Amendment. And then a bunch of them turned right around and voted against the entire bill. Speaking of which, the more comes out about this "health care" bill, the more it sucks. Women's groups and progressives in general are now joining in the call for a Democratic National Committee boycott similar to the one from AmericaBlog, Don't Ask, Don't Give, which is predicated upon the Administration and the DNC's continued assault on LGBT civil rights. Only ten months into a House majority, a Senate majority, and control of the Executive branch, Democrats have proven that no, they really don't give a damn about gays, transgender people, women, immigrants, workers, the poor, or anyone who isn't a cisgendered straight white wealthy nominally christian man. Bertha, we done been had. It's getting awfully crowded under this bus. I thought the rear left wheelwell was cramped before, but damn. I would like to see a similar boycott come from women's organizations, from immigrant advocacy orgs, from labor advocacy groups, and from environmental groups. The more of us who stand up to corporate titty-sucking Democrats, the better. Barring a massive exit stage left to the Green party, the only thing we can do is to stop giving to the machine. Directly support your local, proven, loud-and-proud liberal Dems to primary these wallowing swine. Get them the hell away from our rights before they do any more damage. It sounds like the base is going on strike. Enough is enough. ETA: If all you have to say is, "But the Republicans would be WORSE! Ooga booga ooga booga WAAAAH!" then GTFO. I don't play that game. Scare tactics are for thugs and bullies and the uber-religious, not thinking people. And as Flew points out in comments, the Republicans already took over. These days, there's not much difference between the two.
Dear LJ Genie, whose knowledge of poetry is vast,
There is this poem that I have been searching for years. It appeared in a literature anthology used in my high school English class. That book hasn't been in my possession for years. I don't recall the name of the author, and the only exact quote that I remember (if it is indeed an exact quote recalled correctly) is rather unhelpful. Extensive googling was utterly unhelpful as well.
The poem was fairly long - two or three A5 pages; it was mostly about the difference in live as lived by cats and dogs, and this difference being caused by the cats' different perspective due to their multiple lives (and multiple deaths, too); it concluded with the statement that cats, unlike dogs, realize that "death is the price we pay for living." This would be the unhelpful quote mentioned above.
Do you, dearest genie, happen to recognize this poem?
This entry originated at adampknave.com.  Let’s talk about Popgun! We’ll break this down into the general and personal. General first. Saturday saw the release of the cover for Volume 4, a small version of which is at the left. Ben Templesmith is amazing, isn’t he? I’ve been a fan of his for quite some time so when I found out he would be doing the cover to this volume, well, I admit I squee’d a bit. I truly did.
Popgun Vol 4 is a hefty brick of comics. It’s a whopping 512 pages of material, folks. Yeah, we crammed a lot of comics into the book for you guys. And we kept the price point of $30 US. Why? Because we love, that’s why.
But, you ask, who is in the book? Get ready for a chunk of names:
Alison Acton, Attila Adorjany, Amanda Becker, Michael Birkhofer, John Bivens, Elliot Blake, David Brenion, Shana Brenion, Jeffrey Brown, Lars Brown, Antonio Campo, Dominique Carrier, Jim Charalampidis, David Collinson, Bill Crabtree, Dave Curd, Michelle Davies, Vito Delsante, Todd Dezago, Michael Dialynas, Jeik Dion, Becky Dreistadt, Alex Eckman-Lawn, Nick Edwards, Paolo Ferrante, Jess Fink, Joe Flood, Fonografiks, Elizabeth Genco, Frank Gibson, Vassilis Gogtzilas, Nils Hamm, Mike Houlihan, Alice Hunt, Meg Hunt, Jason Ibarra, Fernanda Jaber, Jock, Andrea Kalfas, Joe Keatinge, Janet Kim, D.J. Kirkbride, Adam P. Knave, Nikos Koutsis, Erik Larsen, Erwin Ledford, Stuart Livingston, Maximo V. Lorenzo, Robert Love, Adam Lucas, Manoel Magalhães, John Malloy, Fell Martins, Thomas Mauer, Derek McCulloch, Michael Meier, MJ, Chris Moreno, Wayne Nichols, Ralph Niese, JM Ken Niimura, Kieran Oats, Anthony Peruzzo, Jeff Powell, Elton Pruitt, Stephanie Ramirez, Darren Rawlings, Stephen Reedy, Andy Ristaino, Salgood Sam, Eric Sandhop, Matteo Scalera, Thomas Scioli, Brandon Seifert, Jonathan Silvestre, Mark Andrew Smith, Frank Stockton, Nick Tapalansky, Ben Templesmith, Jeremy Tinder, Mike Toris, Osmarco Valladão, David Walker, Angie Wang, Matthew Weldon, Anna Wieszczyk, Brian Winkeler, Michael Woods, Anthony Wu, K.I. Zachopoulos, and Alexis Ziritt.
Yeah. We might have involved some creators in this, ya think? Anyway, if you go to Popgun’s own site you can see much more about this amazing book. You can also read five whole stories for free! That’s right, five stories, in their entirety are online for you to read and enjoy.
Now the personal. I am one of the co-editors on this volume, having been promoted since Volume 3. Which is an awesome thing and a hell of a responsibility. Everyone involved puts so much work into the book, and being bumped up to having my name on the spine is a thrill and an honor and something that made me work even harder, honestly.
In a creative sense I have a few stories in this volume, and I’m sure I’ll talk about the other soon. But for right now, one of them is on the website, in the preview area. Which is kinda awesome. It’s called The Black Decahedron. D.J. Kirkbride and I worked with a guy named Jason Ibarra who is simply amazing.
The Black Decahedron is a story about pirates. Female pirates. Female pirates that steal math for their own uses, because they’re sick of having grown up being told that only boys are good at math. I will give you a small preview of a single page. Click that page and you will go to the full sized story. All online for free.
So that’s it for now. More to come. POPGUN Volume 4 hits stores 02/10/2010.
"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity... Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend". - Andrew Futral
Edward Woodward, the fine British actor best known for the American television series THE EQUALIZER, has passed on at age 79.
He also gave award-caliber performances in THE WICKER MAN (the original, not the remake), and BREAKER MORANT. I will strongly recommend both of those films to you if you've not seen them.
Current mood:  sad
Administration
Happy birthday to the most excellent ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) maxymyllyn!
Hello to new reader yud!
Medical
I am cautiously optimistic about skin stuff.
Nebulas
Um. Because I got nudged about this.
The Nebula nomination period is open. My eligible stories:
* "The Angel of Fremont Street"
* "Fortune"
* "Valentines"
Everything else that got published this year was poetry or flash.
Another Auction!
This is [redacted] by Kristin Ross - the third artist so far who doesn't know me, just connected with the story. I get so bouncy at that. :) Her statement, which I find totally awesome:
"I’ve been working with a lot of collage art lately, but Shira Lipkin’s story “Valentines” inspired these four pieces with all original components. The series of four bookmarks is called [redacted]. Lipkin’s story features a narrator desperately trying to catalogue information and my art centers around that idea, as well. I really connected with this theme; in our modern existence, we’re overwhelmed with information every waking moment and we’re constantly logging and processing it. In the bookmarks, the writing comes straight from my journal the day I put myself into the character’s shoes. The finished product represents the problems with memory Lipkin’s narrator struggles with and how both data and recollection can have a shattering effect on one’s identity."
Click here to bid!
Link Soup
* Get a free copy of Interfictions 2 by talking up the auctions!
* Meep!
* Robot paintings.
Daily Science
* Six months after the Mars rover Spirit became trapped in a patch of soft soil, its controllers are preparing to send a set of commands that they hope will free the robotic explorer, NASA announced Thursday.
* "Significant amount" of water found on the moon.
* Mandelbrot in 3-D!
Plans
Must schedule appointment for bloodwork for Elayna - celiac runs in families. The rest of my day is given over to assigning panelists to Arisia lit panels! If I have time after, hopefully writing. And I was up in the middle of the night again, so a nap needs to happen, too.
Foundling
It was a surprise:
finding a tiny cherub,
sucking its small thumb,
out on our doorstep
in a white wicker basket.
It was a puzzle.
How do you do it?
How do you raise a cherub?
Do you tie it down?
What do you feed it?
Can it fly now, right away,
or does it first crawl
and then walk, then fly?
Is it a boy, or a girl,
or something other?
Can it learn English?
Is it hard-wired for language?
How do we begin?
Do we report it?
And if so, who do we call --
a social worker,
or perhaps a priest?
Can humans keep a cherub
left on their doorstep?
We don't even know
if it would ever grow up
into an angel.
I've given up the trappings of being metal, that ritualistic body-shaping and hair-growing and fetishistic costuming so that everyone around me would KNOW I was X-TREME. I've quietly settled down since then into jeans and T-shirts, which are what I'm comfortable in.
I am what I am. I know this. I don't care if you think I'm mundane, and I no longer really care to announce my memberships with a tribe to all passerby. You can find out who I am by talking to me.
This feels like a cleaner, saner way to live. At least for the moment.
Here's my Philcon schedule for this weekend:
Sat 10:00 AM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
THE VALUE OF ART: TRADITIONAL VS. DIGITAL MEDIA (119)
[Panelists: Ray Ridenour (mod), Kyle Cassidy, Luke Stelmaszek, Alan
Beck, Thomas Nackid]
How does an artist set prices for their art? Should a one of a kind
oil painting cost more than a digital piece that took the same
amount of time to make? Do buyers understand the value of art
Sat 12:00 PM in Plaza V (Five) (1 hour)
STEAMPUNK ART: WHO'S DOING IT AND WHY WE LIKE IT. (121)
[Panelists: Kyle Cassidy (mod), D.E. Christman, Thomas Nackid]
A discussion of steampunk artists
Sat 4:00 PM in Crystal Ballroom Two (1 hour)
KYLE CASSIDY SLIDE SHOW (254)
[Panelists: Kyle Cassidy (mod)]
Photographer Kyle Cassidy shows his work
Sun 11:00 AM in Plaza V (Five) (1 hour)
DRAWN TO THE DARK: THE APPEAL OF HORROR ART (113)
[Panelists: D.E. Christman (mod), Mark E. Rogers, Kyle Cassidy,
Thomas Nackid, Hartstein Onezumi]
What draws artists to do horror art? What draws fans to love these
images of gore and creepiness
Sun 2:00 PM in Plaza IV (Four) (1 hour)
WHAT MY CAT HAD FOR BREAKFAST. (218)
[Panelists: Orenthal Hawkins (mod), Kyle Cassidy, Alyce Wilson,
Terri Osborne, KT Pinto]
Just because everyone can have a blog does that mean everyone
should? Panelists discuss what kind of personal responsibility
comes with putting your thoughts out there for the world to read
I have to really applaud the programing people because of all the panels available, these are probably, mostly, the ones I'm competent to be on. I was imagining I'd end up on some panel like "The early untranslated fiction of M. Blatherskythe Blimpzesken: an examination of minor characters in Babylon 5 in comparison with the second transurnal blendstream movement (1977/1987) - Kyle Cassidy (mod)"I'd particularly recommend "what my cat had for breakfast" cause, you know, it'll probably have ROSWELL CONTENT. Also, if there are any out of town authors who don't have a place to stay or were thinking of driving back to NYC, the Rock Star Hotel is vacant that weekend, drop us a line. 
Current mood:  accomplished Current music: wolfsheim: i find your gun
To three of my favorite cat people: This week you'll get a little amusing something in the snail-mail.
A man wakes up on a desert plateau. The staccato pops of automatic fire draw his attention; looking over a ridge, he sees an old man in an outmoded jacket tumbling down a hill. He picks the old man up and carries him out of the sun. The old man dies; the younger man buries him. Alone, the younger man staggers across the desert until he finds:
The Village.
The notion of a remake of The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan's legendarily inaccessible 1967 BBC series, thrilled me more than it bothered me. I don't like remakes. I don't like the idea of dredging the same river for new fish. But the original Prisoner, for all the thunder of its premise, lacked something in execution. McGoohan wanted the audience to draw their own conclusions, but a little more explicitness couldn't have hurt ("yes, Patrick dear, but what do the monkey masks mean?"). And toward the end, the show drifted from challenging-weird to just weird-weird. The same ideas, given a fresh start and a proper budget, would devastate.
Number Six (Jim Cavielzel) stumbles through the Village. Exhausted from walking in the desert all day and afflicted by hallucinations of life in New York, he falls off a rooftop. He awakes in a clinic - The Clinic - under the warm gaze of Dr. 313 and the blue-eyed fatherliness of Number Two (Ian McKellen). "Why are you keeping me here?", Six demands. Two shrugs: "I see no locked doors." This is the insidiousness of the Village: it responds to direct confrontation with gentle redirection. Aside from Number Two, no one denies the existence of a world outside - Isaac Newton, Alexander Graham Bell, David Beckham, Manhattan. But they don't understand why it's so important to Number Six. They just want to help.
The beauty of the original Prisoner was the distinct visual and auditory style of the Village. Shot in Portmeirion, Wales, the use of gay colors, cheery announcements and signs in Albertus typeface all contributed to the air of stiff, enforced conviviality. AMC's The Prisoner has a style all its own as well. Identical 60s-era bungalows, duplexes and diners form neat little rows in the middle of a vast desert. The occasional flashback to New York or to static-ridden surveillance footage jars Six out of his attempts to focus. There are no walls and no guards: there are the simple limits of sand and sky. But Number Two keeps control in other ways. He can't suppress every citizen's desire for escape or their search for something more, so he gives it to them: the Escape Resort! The nightclub More! And just to remind you that this world isn't right, there's the occasional touch of weirdness for its own sake, like the soap opera Wonkers or Brian Wilson's "In Blue Hawaii" or the twin therapists, Number 70.
And no, they don't have anything that's not a wrap.
I love Ian McKellen as the new Number Two. He brings a sinister warmth to the bland pronouncements that he bestows on people: "Every day above ground is a good day." He lives in a pristine opulence that the rest of the Village aspires to. And yet behind everything there's an air of instability. Everyone gets very still whenever he enters a room, as if he and Mommy were just having a screaming argument in the kitchen downstairs and it's imperative that we be good. He carries a grenade with him everywhere, pulling it out of his pocket once or twice an episode and tossing it to make a point. He is the capricious tyrant, just as likely to bestow prizes - a free vacation, a medal for service - as punishments. It takes a brilliant actor to pull that off and still appear sane.
Jim Cavielzel as Number Six, I'm not as sure on. He plays crazy very well, while McGoohan was always proud and stiff. This is essential: Number Six is the man on the fringes of society, and people on the fringes are "crazy," even if they're not disordered. When he's trying to convince 313 or Two that his memories of a world before the Village are real, he fumbles for the thread of his own thought. He lacks the thunderous contempt that McGoohan's Six had for the other conspirators in the Village, but that's for the better. Cavielzel's is a more sympathetic Six. He bites back, but he doesn't bark.
What doesn't quite work for me are the slow-mo shots of Six running through the desert, dropping to his knees when faced with some implacable object - the twin towers, the weird anchor - and screaming. They seem a bit too forced. The horror of the Village comes from its cheerful banality and its absolute impermeability to logic, sprinkled with the occasional bit of grotesque: a giant bubble bouncing down the street and absorbing someone. The horror shouldn't be something that we sit and watch with flashing lights: hey kids! Here's where the horror is!
I watched the first two episodes, "Arrival" and "Harmony," last night (and thanks to Sylvia M. for being a gracious host). So far we already know more about Number Six in two episodes than we ever did in the prior series: he worked for a company, Summakor, that collects CCTV footage to analyze trends in human behavior. We already have a hint of why he resigned as well. Interestingly enough, no one in the Village seems to want to know why: a major plot point from the original series. But this cute and accessible woman he picked up on the streets of Manhattan in flashbacks - Lucy - won't let up on it. But if she's the only one who's curious, why can't Six leave the Village? And if Two wants to know, why hasn't he asked yet?
Ultimately The Prisoner is not about Number Six. We are not supposed to see ourselves in Number Six; we are supposed to see ourselves in the rest of the village. The Prisoner is about how the institution of society deals with a man who will not conform. Perhaps he's not conforming because his brain is chemically imbalanced; perhaps it's because no one around him can supply what he wants. Or perhaps he has memories of a past that no one shares and every time he tries to pursue them, a giant bubble attacks him.
Regardless of why he feels that way, he can't fit in. He rejects all attempts to make him fit in. So how do we respond? Some of us watch him with sad compassion. Some of us write him off ("she's a crazy"; "he's an old drunk"). If he gets too loud or violent, we lock him away. And if he persists in being unmutual, we gently nudge him to the far edge of the herd.
Two more episodes tonight and two on Tuesday. Expect my final thoughts on Friday. Be seeing you.
Original post
Current music: Brian Wilson - "In Blue Hawaii"
In the beginning, there was an A, and it went straight to Z. Such was the way of computerized roleplaying games.
The storylines of RPGs have expanded somewhat since then, but every RPG has an interesting conundrum at its heart: you want to give your players the illusion of freedom, but realistically you need to keep your players pressed firmly against the rails of the plot. Sure, it'd be great if we had an RPG where you had three or four completely separate storylines - a series of noble quests for the good guy who wants to save the kingdom, a series of brutal conspiracies for the evil guy who wants to rule it, and a third series for the whacky guy who doesn't give a crap about the kingdom but wants to seduce nubile, beautiful conquests.
Alas, it's hard to justify creating large, expensive setpieces that won't be seen by two-thirds of your player base, so RPG writers do what Hollywood folks have been doing since movies began: they recycle sets. Whether you're good, bad, or just plain crazy, they have to engineer a plot where you're going to start at the carefully-balanced Shallows of Lakeshore and end up facing down the Big Bad in the very-expensive-to-create Grindguts Cave.
This, in turn, creates a really fascinating writing constriction: you have to create a separate emotional arc for each kind of player you allow. If the PC wants to be a good guy, that's great; everyone loves him, and he'll nobly set out to end the evil in the land. But if the PC wants to be a jerk (which 4.9% of you default to), then not only do you have to give him a motivation for setting out after the MacGuffin, but you have to create a set of separate goals for all your NPCs that explain why they put up with this bloodthirsty wahoo.
In other words, when writing a big RPG like this, you're essentially writing a separate storyline for each kind of playstyle you want to have. That's a lot of words. And if you do that poorly, then you run the risk of having every NPC being a punching bag. If the players feel like the NPCs are going to give you the Staff Of Plot Coupon no matter how they act, then they become less involved.
The way Bioware's gotten around that (at least partially) is to have players in your party have their own motivations. If you act too evil, the good NPCs will leave you, or even attack. Be too much of a nice guy, and that most excellent tank you've spent all that time levelling up will turn on you. Which is also a nice way to encourage a second runthrough.
The other thing Bioware has defaulted to (since it's mostly bulletproof) is to give you a Four-Plot Coupon structure. See, if it's a straight line from the start to the finish, then you run the risk of getting bored/stuck somewhere between A and Z. The standard Bioware structure is to get you past an introductory challenge, then branch off to an "open-ended" segment where you must complete four tasks before you can get to the end game - in the case of Dragon Age, you must do four things to bring the kingdom together against the Darkspawn. Those four tasks are each easily accessible, in a location with their own side quests, so you have the illusion of free will as you pick your choice of plots.
That choice, however, leads to another flaw: you're wandering around in the middle of the game with no ticking clock. Yes, everyone tells you that the Foobari invasion will start any time soon, but realistically you're just meandering and levelling up.
What they've done in Dragon Age to remedy this, however, is really brilliant: they've started tying the tasks together again. Which is to say that when I finished one quest, the only way it could be completed was to get the help of the Circle of Wizards - and when I got to the Circle of Wizards, guess what? They needed my help before they could help me out with my prior quest.
Truth is, I would have gotten to the Circle of Wizards anyway since they were on my Plot Coupon Shopping List. But requiring their help as part of my prior quest made it feel like more of a plot. Now they were a large complication, not a check-off.
BioWare's also started having triggering events in between each of the Plot Coupons to keep the story rolling. For example, when you complete your first Plot Coupons, assassins strike at you on your way to Plot Coupon #2. Complete #2, another mini-quest triggers. This gives the illusion of movement.
It's fascinating, because every RPG has the same core elements: a player, who may or may not be a jerk, must go to various locations, kill monsters, and level up enough to kill the bad guy. BioWare is obviously feeling the restraints on that, and particularly for Dragon Age (I'm just getting to Plot Coupon #3) they're really trying to battle against those shackles. They did that already (most notably in The Twist in Knights of the Old Republic, which cleverly answers an eternal RPG canard), but it's really evident that they're going for broke here.
Dragon Age has a lot of flaws thus far: a hackneyed backstory, NPCs who fucking love jumping in front of you the second you try to open a chest (HAY GUY YOU WANTED TO TALK TO ME, RITE?), some sketchy level design (why, yes, I would like to walk into an ambush of six mages who I can't hurt until they've fired the first six shots!), every NPC is a pinata full of words that you can't really skip past, and of course there's the usual poorly-explained welter of controls. But the story is fascinating to see in its mechanics, because they're definitely trying to break the mold - and it shows, and it's compelling. And for that, I have to give them the long, slow clap.
Hello. My friend recommended this community to me.
This is a looooong story so I'll try to remember all the facts.
I had sex for the first time in August. It all started to what I thought was herpes (but was actually just a pimple) and having some brighter than normal discharge. The first doctor, without any testing, said I had bacterial vaginosis and did douching and an insert pill. Of course douching is BAD and he was a douche-y doctor so I found another one.
I took an extensive STD test and everything was negative. After my period, everything seemed to go back to normal.
October 1st, I was struck with a sudden UTI (first one EVER) and got a three day dose of antibiotics. I went back after a week so they could test and they said I was fine, although I was still feeling weird down there.
Two weeks later, I had sex with my boyfriend and my clitoris burned so badly about 5 minutes before we finished. I went to the doctor the next day (the stupid one) and again without testing, he said the UTI and the bacterial vaginosis much be treated together. Again with the douching... I left to go to the other doctor (the male gyno was the only one open on Saturday so I went because I was worried). The other doctor did a vaginal and urine test. She found 3 kinds of bacteria (Streptococcus Agalactiae, Escherichia Coli, Enterococcus Faecalis) and fungus (Candida Albicans). I received a round of antibiotics, inserts, and a cream.
I had slight itching, but not terrible. My discharge was a bright yellow. My boyfriend and I stopped having sex for two weeks (recommended by the doctor) and I also tried acidophilus + doing the yogurt remedy.
One thing, when I started the inserts, my lower abdomen started to hurt. Not all the time, but every now and then. It feels like menstrual cramps but I'm not do for another week (on the pill). I started to worry maybe it was PID. But I also developed horrible gas when I tried the garlic method (two cloves chopped up and swallowed.... not doing that again). I also had the cramping last time and it was about a week before my period (on a different set of pills). The douche doctor said it was from the "inflammation". But the cramping went away as soon as my period came.
The cramping I'm worried about. Of course there are several possibilities to the cramping (gas, the pill, the inserts, PID, the infection...). The other symptoms seemed to have all but disappeared but the cramping every now and then. It's not terrible pain but just that uncomfortable sudden menstrual cramp feeling and it's gone.
I can't go to the doctor until next week... (work. I live and work in JAPAN so, take the morning off for the doctor??? WHAT?! -_-).
Windycon was a great deal of fun, as always. Got to meet some new folks and catch up with friends … I didn’t have much programming, so in a lot of ways this one turned into a social con for me. Many hugs, lots of hanging out chatting in the lobby and elsewhere. Met some new fans, but managed to keep the ego from getting too swollen (despite certain people’s best efforts). All in all, a good way to spend a weekend.
I learned that the steampunk theme brings out a lot of costumers, which was fun to see. Got to hear Tom Smith in concert, ate way too much food, and made it to one and a quarter of my two panels. (DAW vs. Baen was cross-scheduled with the Writing Workshop, so sadly I only caught the last 10 minutes of the panel.)
One of the most entertaining moments was when author Kelly Swails donned a Jig the goblin tattoo and decided to pose urban fantasy style, complete with a knife she swiped from the restaurant. Naturally, this called for the full cover art treatment. I’m obviously not a professional graphic designer, but I’m pretty amused by what I was able to put together last night*.
Every good goblin-themed urban fantasy requires an equally good title, right? “Goblin Killer Blues” was suggested by archivist Lynne Thomas. Think you can do better? Suggest a title in the comments, and I’ll put the best ideas up for a vote. The winner gets an autographed copy of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].
Have fun!
—
*Because this is the Internet and I know someone will ask, the answer is no, I am not writing a goblin-themed urban fantasy book.
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
Navigate: (Previous 20 friends)
|
|
optimistic
sad
