Yet Another Damn Meme…

…this one about literature. Now with embedded commentary!

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they’ve printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve read only six and force books upon them.

Cut for the list and various associated comments

It’s CATURDAY!

I woke up this morning with the kitty Liam nestled next to me. The instant I was awake, so was he, making even more of a pest of himself than his usual pesty self. He promptly started crawling all over me, licking me, biting me, and generally just being cute as hell.

So, being the indulgent man I am, I not only didn’t kick him off the bed, I picked up my cell phone and started snapping pics like crazy.

Clicky here and prepare to go ‘Awww…’

Fragments of the Weekend: Theater of Pain

We started with dayo.

The three of us–sulenda, dayo, and I–arrived at Galleria Domain late in the evening. We started with dayo, with fingernails and knives and blindfolds and a very nasty little wooden paddle that’s about a foot long but only a quarter of an inch wide, and has a bite that belies its size. sulenda had brought an exquisitely lovely folding knife that made a most dlightful sound when it was unfolded, and each soft snick brought a delightful shudder from dayo.

And then, when she was a quivering happy mass, sulenda turned her attention to me.

Which is not, looking back on it now, something I was entirely prepared for.

Now, mind you, I know that she plays rough, and I know she likes inflicting pain. What I didn’t quite realize was the extent to which these things are true.

She also rather likes to win. Life lesson here: Victory goes not always to the strongest or the fastest, but rather to the person who’s willing to do whatever it takes to win. I’ve never played with anyone who plays quite as rough as she, and that made for quite an experience.

I’ve also never played before with anyone who is not a romantic partner or a potential romantic partner, and that too was an experience.

Now, all these things might sound like complaints, but they’re really not. Far from it. If I have any regret whatsoever, it’s that sulenda is leaving the country soon, and the odds are pretty good I may never see her again. That’s a pity; she’s thoroughly a delightful person, and I’ve vastly enjoyed being able to spend time with her. I also suspect I could potentially have a great deal to learn from her.

Like this thing she does with rope, for instance. At one point, she did this rather clever and tricksy thing where she tied a loop around the fingers of my right hand, put my right hand on my shoulder, ran the rope down my back, twisted my left arm up behind my back, ran the rope ’round my left wrist, then back up over my shoulder again and around my right elbow. The result: Just fine, if a bit awkward, as long as I didn’t move; instant punishment in the form of pain if I struggled.

Which, naturally, was the point, as the challenge was to escape.

And I did. After a great deal of struggling, accompanied by some rather colorful swearing and general thrashing around in pain. I apparently had an audience for that bit theater of pain, indeed. I’m told it was quite entertaining.

The strongest memory I have, though, is a vivid, almost visceral image of the look on her face while her nails (carefully filed to points, I might add) dug into my arm. “I’m a good person,” she said. Twist, dig, white-hot flash of pain. “Say it!”

And I did. And she is.

And I still have marks.

I neglected the next morning to ask her how to do that tricksy tie thing with the rope. It’s a skill I definitely wish to have.

WoW: Whee!

Just got out of Black Temple for the first time. Lots of dying, learning the fights in there, but on the whole I gotta say the trash is a lot easier than the trash in Serpentshrine. Looks like we’re gonna have a lot of fun in there. Woot!

Afterwards, we went and killed Magtheridon just for fun. Took no time at all, and I finally got my Tier 4 chest piece, which (believe it or not) I’ve never had before. (Not that it has mattered a great deal, really, but it’s kinda nice to have the set.)

Tomorrow, ZA, just for fun. Sunday, back into Black Temple, or SSC, not sure which yet. As I type this, my roommate David is off-tanking in Sunwell, on the second to the last boss. Nobody on their server has downed the last boss in there yet.

And now, off to bed.

Fragments of the Weekend: Pincushion Porn

Tuesday night, dayo and I came in from a walk in the park and curled up in front of the TV to watch some of Tristan Taormino’s porn. I had mostly packed for the return trip, but left the box of needles out, seeing as how we hadn’t played with them yet. dayo also had a shiny new purple aluminum cane that needed a proper christening, as well.

The porn was simple, as porn most often is. A group of porn stars in a house for a weekend, a bunch of cameras, no plot or script; reality TV applied to fucking. I still had sulenda‘s marks on my body–still have them now, as I write this, in fact–and that seemed somehow appropriate. We put on the porn, refreshing in its lack of fake tits, and I curled up behind dayo with the needles.

“One! One needle in your flesh! Ah, ah, ah!” I’ve been told I’m very Count von Count in most things, particularly in most things related to sex. Go with what works, I suppose.

Clicky for pic after fifteen needles; no blood, but might be triggering for some folk anyway

Fragments of the Weekend: Fractal Misery

On the flight back from Chicago yesterday, I sat next to a woman who might just be The Most Miserable Person in the World. And I say that without even having met all the people in the world.

She stayed on the phone from the moment we boarded to the moment we pushed off from the gate, and her entire conversation was a litany of her personal misery, described in the most minute detail imaginable. For nearly forty minutes, she shared her misery with whoever was on the other end of the phone, and me, and everyone else within earshot; we all learned of how unhappy she was on the trip to the airport, how bad the traffic was, how the bus arrived five minutes late, how heavy her suitcase was, how badly she needed to use the washroom on her trip through security. We learned how she did not like the man in front of her at the security checkpoint, how the employees of the airport would not help her take her shoes off, how difficult it was for her to find her ID in her purse.

And through it all, i learned many things about misery I’ve never before known. Her misery was fractal in nature; every part of her misery, when looked at in isolation, was just as bad as her misery taken as a whole.

Take her need to use the washroom, for instance. She zoomed in on that part of her misery, a trip as dizzying as any exploration of the Mandelbrot set. The urge began before she was even through security, making her misery at the whole miserable process just that much greater. And then, once past security, when she thought she would be able to do something about it, the man ahead of her dropped his boarding pass. She tried to tell him that he had dropped his boarding pass, but he would not listen to her; even while she chased after him, still he did not listen. And he moved away from the washrooms, increasing the time she had to travel to get there. And her shoes weren’t properly tied, so walking to the washroom was that much harder…especially in light of the carry-on bag she had to carry, which was heavy and tired her…

She relayed his tale in a voice clearly practiced, honed for the task like a sushi chef’s favorite knife, the tool fitted perfectly to the job to which it was put. Each vowel held just long enough to communicate the injustice of a cold world not appropriately aware of her needs, her suffering; consonants clipped in such a way as to express her contempt and disdain for the formless, faceless forces of malice arrayed against her.

It made me wonder if there is some quantum limit, some fundamental point past which no further resolution becomes possible. Her misery was tracked in such minute detail, and reported to such an astonishingly high fidelity, that I thought perhaps no. Perhaps there is no point past which the form and shape of her misery becomes lost in the fog of quantum uncertainty; perhaps her internal model of her misery really is infinite in its detail, so that any magnification, any level of zoom reveals more edges and whorls, more information about the precise contours of her suffering.

She continued her phone call until the flight attendant made her turn off the phone, her last comment to her unseen companion a bitter complaint about being forced to hang up.

There is a lesson in here somewhere, which your humble scribe is not clever enough to tease out.

Spam poetry

“Harry potter loves hottie lover, who loves mighty shocker poker.”

Spam for yet another penis pill site (are there really people in the world who honestly believe that taking a pill can make one’s penis bigger? For real?), but the poetry is quite nice.

Come, let me introduce you to my mighty shocker poker!

Monday night!

Okay, here’s the scoop. We’ll be getting together for tapas (which I have no idea what that is) at 8 PM on Monday. The info:

Cafe Iberico (Tapas)
739 N Lasalle Dr
Chicago, IL 60610
PH: 312-573-1510

reservation will be under the name – Franklin.

Hope to see you guys there!