kiya

I am learning to git.

Working on writing for this call for submissions for polytheistic fairy tales has led to me doing research on the following things today:

- bee gods
- mead in mythology
- crafts made from antler
- when does the salmon run happen
- various sorts of dried meat
- nettle cloth

Writing is fun! You learn things!

(The nettle cloth I mostly looked up to confirm my recollection that yes, it's nettles I was remembering. Discovering that one can make cloth out of nettles came about from a previous round of story-related research, maybe a year or so ago.)

So since I'm stuck sitting under the baby at the moment I am screwing around with astrology again. calpatine summarised my sun/moon/ascendant as "LET'S GO CHANGE THE WORLD TOGETHER wait plan? what do you mean plan? THAT'S A SECRET".

I swapped that a little to "I'M NOT TELLING YOU ABOUT MY BRILLIANT LACK OF PLAN TO CHANGE THE WORLD".

Then I added Mercury to get "I'M NOT TELLING YOU ABOUT MY BRILLIANT LACK OF PLAN TO CHANGE THE WORLD IN PEDANTIC DETAIL."

If I keep going to include all the classical planets I wind up with "I'M NOT TELLING YOU ABOUT MY BRILLIANT, SENSITIVE, ARTSY, DILETTANTEISH LACK OF PLAN TO CHANGE THE WORLD TO MATCH UNREASONABLY HIGH STANDARDS IN PEDANTIC DETAIL."

... not inaccurate.

I am suffering from more than the usual horrible temptation to write thumbnail portrait superhero versions of random people I know. Not that I suspect my superhero webcomic will get off the ground in my imminent lifetime, but.

More attempts to comb out my brain, meanwhile. This will be written through the haze of horrific headache, so please bear with me if you want to bother reading it at all.

Brief context summary: in ancient times, most mystery traditions were private offshoots of ordinary religious practice, undertaken by the particularly devoted to that set of stuff, the particularly interested, or whatever else. They existed in the context of a surrounding culture that took their raw assumptions as a given and provided what amounts to specialist knowledge.
( So let's run with that. )

A couple of quotes pulled out of context:

"My backbrain just said 'It is bad spiritual engineering for your landwight agreements to have single fail points on loadbearing royalty.'  This is why I'm not allowed to talk to normal people."

"... Tain Bo Kachina...."

I think 'Loadbearing Royalty' is probably my favorite phrase for this week, by the way. It's hard to work it into a conversation, though.

In other news, I just wrote a serious theology essay about American Idol. (Well, using bits of this past season of American Idol as prime illustrative example, to be fair.)

Curse you, archaeowiki, for having extensive bibliography notes.

Curse you, interesting academic books, for being either not readily findable or four hundred dollars each.

So, while waiting for the TiVo to finish recording a bit of Heroes, we are having an extensive discussion of game show probability theory.

(We are so never getting to go on Deal or No Deal.)

We seem to have successfully rebooted my cat, and he's now working properly. So that's something.

Went through the PantheaCon schedule and sort of tentatively worked out what things I'd like to attend, barring resolution of conflicts and depending on my mood and capacity. At the moment, I don't have much conflict on major rituals I want to go to -- since I'll be staying at the hotel, I'll be able to get to the Pomba without a problem, nothing conflicts with one of the seidh slots, I'll get to the Bast ritual at last, I need to pick between a Feri ritual and a Brighid one, and elfwreck's Discordian ritual.

Need to do packing and prep for trip, which would require actually facing the fact that I'm running low on time to do packing and prep for trip. (And back to my hostile relationship with linear time.)

Word to remember: Amphisbaena

While I'm glad to know I'm still quite skilled at driving myself mad, I do not currently need the practice. So I would like to stop now. Especially since mostly I'm being stressy about the fact that my stress is silly.

Doing reading about chaos magic now, on and off, which is being interesting. I read this description of magical models; the first three models I responded to with, "Yes, I've used that one when it seemed to be the most appropriate," the fourth with, "Hm. That could be useful, I'll stash it somewhere and see what happens," and the fifth with, "Heh. That hardly needs iterating, does it?"

Reading about the whole thing leaves me wondering a bit; it reminds me of the time I was shuffling Tarot one lazy day in English class (it was May, and the day of the French IB exam or something so there were five people in class and we were doing nothing much), and someone near me asked me what it was. I told her, and got the response, "You don't . . . believe in that stuff, do you? I mean, you're Science Girl." I said, "I believe in what works." Which is similar but not identical to what I'm picking up about what Chaotes do, as far as I can tell.

Section 67: 847. 1112 total. Done. (Yes, that is less than you'd expect from yesterday's total; I deleted a paragraph.)
Section 68: 363. Done.
1210 total. Which seems to irritate oneironaut for some reason.

That means that my None-o total comes to: 22,543 words. Respectable, that.

(Randomthought: Hm. That's something else I need an icon for. Make a mental note, I do. Geekery icon will do. (Vast, pathetic vistas of self-expression.))