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via Jezebel

The Groupon Guide to: Monetary Conversions

The gallant globetrotter must have a firm grasp on the relative value of the currency in his or her billfold, cash clip, or velvet coin sack. Here’s a crash course:

• 100 American dollars = 629 Chinese yuan
• 20,000 Norwegian krone = 11 unsettling minutes in a cramped submersible exploring Norway’s Hornindalsvatnet Lake
• The writhing horror you saw down there = tentacles belonging not to a beast of this age
• The unrestful nightmares that have plagued you since = more than just dreams?
• The later pages of your uncle’s journal = slowly descend into prophetic scrawls and disturbing pictograms
• Confronting the living dread slumbering in the Hornindalsvatnet ? your sanity
• If you are reading this = you have been driven mad. All hail the Timeless Ones!

So. Cthulhu’s napping in Norway? No wonder he’s still snoozing. Symptoms of hypothermia include “shivering, lethargy, confusion, apathy, delirium, heart rhythm irregularities, or coma.”

Also, this is probably the most useful economics intro I’ve seen in ages.

I’m annually amused by Warren Ellis‘s Valentine’s Day advice:

Happy Valentine’s Day to all. And to those who hate the day, I say this: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

The Beyond Words blog at Altalang.com provides some insight into Lupercalia:

But what’s in a name? Lupercalia is loosely connected with the ancient Greek festival of the Arcadia Lykaia (????? — lykos, “wolf”), which was held on the slopes of Mount Kykaiaon (“Wolf Mountain”), the tallest mountain in Arcadia, in the beginning of May. Lykaia was a primitive rite of passage that may have possibly entailed cannibalism and the possibility of werewolf transformation for the adolescent male participants.

In Roman mythology, however, Lupercus can be associated with the Roman god Faunus (the equivalent of Pan, the god of shepherds). Lupercus’ festival, celebrated on February 15, was also called Lupercalia, and his priests wore goatskins during all rites and celebrations. The Lupercal is also the cave where Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were suckled by a she-wolf, also named Lupa — which closely ties the god and the holiday to the origins of the Roman Empire.

And then there’s the Wikipedia entry, which recounts the less sensational bits of historical detail:

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci (or the flamen dialis) of two male goats and a dog.^[7] Next two young patrician Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh.

So the next time you find yourself irritated by the superficial displays of affection-on-demand encouraged by this Hallmark holiday, well …  just be glad you’re not standing around in your air-conditioned goatskin skivvies with milk, blood, and bits of wool dripping into your eyes as a bunch of old clergy dudes in their goatskin skivvies wait expectantly for you to smile and laugh on cue.

Because that’s not creepy and awkward at all. (Probably. I mean, I don’t know what you people do for fun.)

Things that have happened since my last post, in no particular order:

• We drove 2,300 gloriously winding miles to New England and back, and saw mountains and fall foliage and stayed with Will’s grandmother in a lovely Maine fishing village. Sadly, the moose avoided us. This time.
• The new school year started, and we have a temporary but thoroughly awesome marketing and communications specialist on board for the new year. If they don’t let me keep him, I will cry great tears of fury and then the revenge plotting will begin. Just you wait.
• My personal laptop had decided its screen looks FABULOUS in rainbow-colored vertical stripes, and so it keeps acquiring more. And more. And we’re quickly reaching the point at which the pretty stripes are making it sort of impossible to read/watch anything.
• A new season of MLP:FIM has begun, and I’ve not seen any of them. (See FABULOUS rainbow-colored stripes.) Yes, I could watch them on Will’s computer, but I have to wait for him to go to bed and then sit in an uncomfortable chair instead of my comfy couch-nest, and I’m sure I could probably come up with something else to whine about if you give me a minute…
• A squirrel got stuck in our family room chimney a few weeks ago. It’s still there, as the critter catchers couldn’t get to it without either removing the back furnace or the fireplace itself. So huzzah for space heaters! Boo on  contractors and critter catchers not returning calls! [Filed under: The House Is Trying to Kill Us.]
• Samhain quietly came and went. Peace to all who observed third harvest, and spent time remembering their Honored Dead. Blessings also to the Honored Dead among us. May we make you proud, and be always mindful of those who have gone before.
• We spent fourth harvest (Thanksgiving) with Will’s family. It was both delicious and entertaining, as expected. I was most impressed by the small child who clearly preferred cheese over cookies. Cheeeese. Smart kid.
• I voted in our local elections and was cheered by the staffers and saluted by a veteran for taking the time to do so. (Next time I’ll ask where the cookies/massage line starts. I bet you’d get a lot more voters…) This particular vote was important to me, because I very badly wanted to see some city council members replaced — specifically those who kept blocking gender-based anti-discrimination policies in housing, employment, public facilities, etc.
• Collaborative yoga is on hiatus because we lost our teacher and couch-nesting season makes me not want to go Out There unless I absolutely have to. Also, hedgeturtle. I rest my case.
• We discovered a sushi/boba tea shop at the southern end of downtown St. Joseph. As much as I like Sweet Moon Tea, this other place is kind of awesome — they don’t use powders, but fresh ingredients. The taro was kind of amazing. If only I could remember the name.
• Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third came out. I have mixed feelings on both games, though SR3 might warrant its own post. I’m replaying SMT: Strange Journeys on the DS. Maybe I’ll finish it this time! A girl can dream.
• We are now in the “consume ALL the things” phase of the “holiday” season. November is almost over. Seriously. When did that happen?

That is all.

This site desperately needs an overhaul. Put that on the things to do list, Ghost Assistant.

*Hedgeturtle: My antisocial side when I’m in hiding mode — a cross between a hedgehog and turtle, all prickly and withdrawn. Coined during a conversation with the lovely Erin Palette.

Every once in a while, though, I do manage to remember how much more stressful life could be. Sometimes the best peace is actually won by taking a look around and recognizing the efforts of those who support you, inspire you, or just make you laugh. Even better, tell that person what you’re thinking. It can be anything from a simple thank you, to buying them a coffee if they’re having a bad day, to singing their praises to their bosses. It’s easy to forget how much that can mean, and sometimes the effects cascade in unexpected ways.

Today I sent a note to the director of another department to let him know that one of his new developers is actually an outstanding customer service rep for their group. Later, she and few other people in the group actually emailed me to say thank you for making her day — apparently the director really made a big deal about that note. He thanked her for making the department look great, and he copied her other bosses and even his boss. By all accounts, she was thrilled. Which is good! I’m glad she enjoyed the recognition. Meanwhile, I was having twinges of sympathetic embarrassment on her behalf. And then, after I was done with my weird little bout of self-invoked awkwardness, I realized I had a stealth case of warm fuzzies from knowing my quick little email had set off that chain reaction.

We live in a fracturing reality these days, one that seems increasingly isolationist and self-absorbed. We complain much, and do little. It’s too easy to get lost in that, and to dwell on the things that make us bitter and unhappy. Sometimes, we just need to remind ourselves to look up every now and then, and to actually make an effort to acknowledge the other lives that intersect with ours. Very often, we would be poorer without them.

Tomorrow I get wake up extra early so I can waste … er, spend the day in Chicago with my coworkers, enduring pep talks and state-of-the-office presentations and team-building exercises. And then I take the train home early like the grumpy old lady I am while the others enjoy a boat tour and have dinner. Why? Because I have deadlines that cannot be missed.  So I will spend the evening working again, unless my twitchy, twitchy hand gives out.

Oh, and also there’s housecleaning to do. We have friends coming over Friday night. And then more work on Saturday, so I can get this thing printed in time for a Monday meeting. Oh, how I love the start of the academic year. You betcha.

On the plus side, I officially have a new boss who is not an academic dean. I am strangely hopeful.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. And an early wake-up call. /grumblegrumblegrrrrr

Back in the ’90s, I worked for a small nonfiction book publisher; we specialized in sports and sports psychology titles, and a typical print run was 1,000-2,5000 books per edition, depending on the title. We sold to distributors, bookstores, and individual customers (through catalog sales, and then later, the website).

Of the distributors, Borders was the perpetual thorn in our side; the orders that made us approach the mail or fax with trepidation, significantly more so than any other customer. Ingram had wrangled a much deeper discount, and Baker and Taylor was more scattershot and inconsistent with the titles and numbers they ordered, but Borders … Borders would order five or six cases of a title, distribute them to the stores, and then return the majority to us before their invoice was due 90 days later. And then they would immediately re-order the same title, sometimes before the return had landed in our warehouse. So we would take those same returned books, box them up, and ship them right back. Repeat until the books became unsellable from shipping wear and had to be remaindered.

Mind you, distributors, the big three, anyway, did not pay shipping, so that was our company footing the cost for shipping these titles back and forth every few months.

It was a recurring problem to get actual money out of Borders; they would attempt to write off almost all of their debts with the perpetual return-and-reorder machine. Sometimes they would double-claim return credits, or claim returns we’d never received. When the boss finally sold the company to a larger sports publisher, Borders owed us — if I remember correctly — something like $9,000 in actual funds. They insisted they had $12,000 of outstanding return credit (they did not). I ran the reports and provided all kinds of documentation to the accounts payable office at various levels — several times, in fact. They never once acknowledged receipt of the documentation, even though we had proof they’d received it. And still they refused to pay. I believe they were eventually written off as a bad debt once the company finally changed hands.

When I ran into my former boss a few years later, she said Borders was still sending her notices about twice a year, insisting that the old publishing house owed them that mysterious $12,000. Every time, she would photocopy the original reports and numbers, deny their claim, and insist that they pay the outstanding $9,000. Six months later, she’d receive another notice. We laughed, but it was an exasperated laugh, one punctuated with much eye-rolling.

So, my own feelings on the demise of Borders are a bit of a mixed bag. I loved the brick-and-mortar store. I hated the distributor side of the business. Which was more reflective of the company’s core business practices, I can’t say.

I’ll miss browsing the shelves of an actual bookstore, though, since I despise the new Barnes and Noble location — now that it’s been surgically attached to the patchwork monkey side of the mall, I can’t stand the place.  Granted, it’s probably doing well because it’s the only major bookstore left in the area, as far as I know. There are a few niche shops — a couple of Christian stores, gaming stores, and the like — but nothing like a good general bookstore. I wonder how long B & N’s fortune will last.

So, today will be a post about beautiful things.

Remember that band I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The Moulettes? I found a copy of their CD from a British-based second-hand seller off Amazon.  Think piratical back-room chamber musicians, dingy wigs askew, getting paid under the table in gin and cigarettes.  The vocals remind me of the Andrews Sisters, or maybe a mellow incarnation of the Ditty Bops, with Jill Tracy’s wicked sense of humor and lovely harmonies (no Rasputina-style vibrato warbles here).  The main instruments are cello, violin and bassoon, and they shift tempo on a dime.

My only real complaint is that a few of the songs occasionally plummet into the so-soft-as-to-be-impossible-to-hear territory — “Devil of Mine” is particularly prone to this — but that’s a minor irritation compared to the otherwise delicious feast. DoM has an interesting video, too, the sort of imagery that reminds me of someone being lured to a faery party that disappears at dawn and leaves them lying in a muddy grove.

I’ve just discovered the John Barleycorn Must Die blog, chronicling the creative process and tomfoolery of the writer and artist as they bring a graphic novel to life.

WHAT IS ’JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE’ ABOUT?

This graphic novel is about the end of the reign of the sky gods and the birth of humanity.

Since time immemorial, the sky gods, aided by earthly Fraternities, have impregnated mortal women, producing demigods who have influenced humanity in their favour. In the 17th century, Elizabeth Cromwell (Oliver Cromwell’s mother) created a Sorority of mortal women to kill these demigods before they generate ‘sky fall’.

A magician, John Barleycorn, is charged by a mysterious woman to expose the last demigod before he can bring about the enslavement of humanity….

The writer (editor/artist/writer Terri Windling’s husband, Howard Gayton) and the artist (Rex Van Ryn) start with an old folk song and spin it out into a modern story. Which doesn’t end well for poor John Barleycorn, as we all know. They’re posting pages of the novel as they go, so I’ll have to go back and read from the beginning.

Also: I am in delighted awe of Brittney Lee’s papercut art. I really have nothing more to say except that I’m incredibly envious of her talent and creativity. And I’m hoping she does post a tutorial at some point, because I would love to give that a try at some point, if only for my own amusement.

In other news, I admit I laughed out loud the first time I saw the new local Crimestoppers/SBPD commercial that insists graffiti is not art.  It shows local children dutifully painting over tags on a building, and is a painfully obvious,  panties-officially-bunched, political pissing match response to the CAD article the Tribune ran a few weeks back (which is apparently no longer available on the SBT site, so huzzah for Google cache!).

The second time I saw it, it only succeeded in pissing me off.

Yes, it is art. You may not agree with its method of delivery, or its message, and those are valid and arguable points. There is a moral gray area there. But it is art. It’s the only interesting thing about being stuck watching a train go by. It’s a splash of color on forgotten buildings, and utility boxes no one ever notices otherwise, and deadly dull bridges with failed scrubby landscaping. It’s an unexpected glimmer of creativity in a landscape that is unmitigated boredom.  And as far as I’m concerned, it resides firmly in the realm of beautiful things.

The headache lingers, though it’s bearable this week. The eye seems to be healing well enough. At least it just looks like I cut my lid or something, rather than walking around with half makeup. Haha.

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MrFenris lives. I hope to have visual confirmation soon.

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Will played through L.A. Noire and continues to battle the frustration-fest that is Alice: The Madness Returns. I’m running through Kingdom Hearts Re:coded on the DS. Mostly it’s good and fun, but wow, do I suck at the platformer bits.  Also, it suffers greatly from magic camera syndrome at the most inopportune times.

I got about 90% through Okamiden before succumbing to frustration at a boss battle redux (the giant kabuki puppet) and walking away from it. It’s a cute, fun little game, although the inaccuracy of the stylus as a brush mechanism drove me batty at times, and I was terrible at mining the demons for organs and whatnot to improve my weapons. Ah, well, maybe I’ll come back to it and suddenly Renjishi won’t be such a cheating bitch. I can dream.  But seriously … how can you not look at Chibiterasu and want to plaaaay? That pup is the incarnation of all things adorable!

Ghost Trick has been enjoyable, although it relies heavily on timing, which is another of my weaknesses.  It has a sarcastic sense of humor that appeals to me, though.  9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors is also good, if a bit daunting. There are so many different endings — and most of them are pretty horrible.  The one big gripe I have with it are the long sections of cut-scenes. Multiple endings makes it theoretically replayable, but I’m just not sure I can sit through those again. The Unskippable crew would have a field day with the entire game.

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Yesterday would have been my dad’s 74th birthday. I don’t know why that seems vaguely impossible; he was close to retirement when he died, his thick, wavy black hair all shot through with gray when he forgot to color it.  He’d had reading glasses for a good decade by then, and had finally (grudgingly) accepted a hearing aid. He was in the midst of completing a second bachelor’s in computer science, despite having worked as a programmer for most of his life, and was working full time for a local payroll company. Still. He always seemed far too ornery to grow old like normal people do.

Yesterday was also my youngest brother’s 29th.  That’s more believable.  Even so, he’s been in Japan for four years, now, and has weathered employer bankruptcy,  Tokyo train commutes, negotiating rent and utilities red tape in Japanese, several pairs of shoes and many more socks worn clear through, terrible bosses, bizarre seafood pizzas at the Tokyo Shakey’s, a trip to South Korea, the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima meltdown, and, from a distance, Mom’s eternal fretting. I’m glad he’s having the experiences he is. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wanna give him a good shake so he’ll send Mom a freaking postcard. Sheesh.

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That’s all for now. Sleep time and all that.

So, a tiring week. And I’ve forgotten any postable ideas that briefly bubbled to the surface.

Instead, here are my two favorite post-Europeans, at least for today. One’s joined the Cult of America and the other’s technically still the Queen’s spy, after all.  Also, is anyone else unsurprised that Craig Ferguson is a Lovecraft fan? Neil Himself does make an amusing point about HPL’s characters.

Elsewhere…

• Erin Palette is spending the week analyzing the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cast as analogues to the classic D&D adventuring party. I’m curious whether she’s going to go cleric or ranger for Fluttershy. We shall see.
• Monica Valentinelli is running a contest for bloggers — write about your passion on your blog and send her the link, and you could win a $25 DriveThru gift certificate or other goodies.
• Note to self:  Self, keep an eye on The Moulettes, Caravan Palace, and Clockwork Dolls