Zeborah

Sure, it looks happy enough as it bobs towards you, beak open in a smile and eyes a-twinkle as if to say, "Isn't this fun?"

But then it turns — not of its own volition, but caught in the same eddies that govern the suds and drowned midges. Slowly it turns, and its beak still seems to smile, but its eyes look at you sideways now, almost pleadingly. It keeps bobbing as it turns; it keeps staring ahead with dead, dead eyes — and then you see it. A single tear: a tear you never saw fall, but there it quivers on the edge of that unmoving beak as the currents of the bathtub remorsely spin your rubber ducky away from you.

You may turn it back to face you; you may see it smile again. But you'll always remember. You'll always remember.

I won't say where it is, for Reasons, but it's recently shifted to being a wee video advert that you play and halfway through a banner in the video tells you what to type in. (There appear to be other options for accessibility, I haven't tried them.)

The thing that makes it easy is that the videos are clearly from sponsors. And which you get shown clearly depends on your region. And clearly in my region, there's only one sponsor and it is Tui Beer, and that's the answer to the captcha 50% of the time I've been on this site. The other 50% of the time it's a short slogan they've picked which I forget because it's been a week or so since I got it.

Doesn't matter, anyway. Because theoretically, if I could program this sort of thing, I could program a bot to go in and download All The Content by just trying "Tui Beer" over and over

For the one or two people on my flist who watch Criminal Minds and therefore don't actually need the spoiler cut:

( Spoilers for Criminal Minds  )

I guess this is what happens when you kill all the people who created the world
and then take over in their place
there is no transition meeting
no one tells you these things
(from Better Myths which is fantastically funny; generally it has language which is problematic in multiple arenas, but this one's fairly good)

In unrelated news, rewriting my CV keeps giving me fantastic revelatory ideas for new (professional) blog posts. Well, technically one came from staring out the bus window at the Beams of Hope, but I was meant to be rewriting my CV at the time, so that kinda counts.

Because my skin can't bear the touch of iron. I break out in itchy bumps that ooze pus. This is annoying as it seriously cuts down on the number of my few bits of jewelery (and my prettiest hair thing) I can wear.

In other news, should I apply for a job in Kazakhstan? I think I won't, but so tempting. I just wish they had the salary range up there so I could prove to myself that I couldn't afford to keep paying my mortgage on it. The fact that Kazakh is agglutinative and has seven cases and I know from Mongolian that vowel harmony is not as fun in practice as in theory and I rather suspect that the evidentiary verb ending system is most probably the same, though it'd still be cool to try -- is, you see, not helping.

(It does help that I had a good week at work.)

I have patches of snow in my garden that are very nearly a week old.

I have a doubly static kitty. She's curled in the sun not going anywhere, and her fur crackles if I try to stroke her.

I have an iPad borrowed from work to work on for work purposes, so can testify that Angry Birds is astoundingly addictive.

And I have a need of recipes that make use of stale bread. So far I can:

1. dice and freeze for croutons
2. toast (but I don't eat much toast - oh wait, it could be the best excuse ever for spaghetti on toast. Guess what I'm having for lunch in ten seconds time?)
3. dice and mix with all the leftovers and some milk in a casserole dish. This turned out surprisingly good considering the diversity of the leftovers, but not so good that I'm likely to make it on a regular basis.

The bread doesn't go stale that quickly, it's just I'm only one person. Actually it's remarkably long-living. If it was store-bread I'd joke about preservatives, but I made it myself so I've no idea why it takes a week to be properly stale and never goes mouldy. I keep it wrapped in a teatowel on top of the fridge (so the cat can't get at it) -- this is the extent of my bread-preservation efforts.

This morning Boots was still eating very little but was a lot perkier about it: wandering around a little and sitting, rather than staying it one spot with her chin to the ground for hours on end. On the strength of that I decided not to take her to the vet, though I did stay home watching her rather than go anywhere.

This afternoon/evening she perked up even more and ate a bunch more super-nommy glop and even a little bit of kibble. (At one point she even asked for kibble; she just got tired of it quickly and decided she'd rather have some more super-nommy glop instead.) When a chunk of lamb mince fell off my plate she practically pounced on it and fought a valiant fight against the fact that it was still very hot from being cooked; that now vanquished, she's sitting watching me eat the rest, very attentively.

Have made power-off images for my Pocketbook and read an old F&SF epub I'd had sitting around.

Chores today included: washing laundry, washing cat carrier, and emptying chemloo. All water sourced from the drippings of my leaky tap (which also provides water for my kettle and washing dishes). I really will get onto a plumber soon, but in the meantime it relieves my guilt a bit that I'm getting increasingly efficient at using the waste.

Attempted to book online for someone to come mow my lawns, but the company's upgraded the website and now it doesn't work in Firefox or Safari on Mac.

What else was today? Ah, yes, Doctor Who. You know, while under urgency due to the earthquake, our government passed a copyright amendment that provides for your internet to be cut off if three accusations of downloading infringing material from a file sharing site are sustained against you. (You see how vital this legislation is to Christchurch's recovery, of course.) The bill as passed plugs a few outrageous holes pointed out in the #blackout campaign a year or two ago that kept it from being passed back then, but keeps this same outrageous premise. So there's not much I can say about Doctor Who. At least not in public.

In general, feeling much less stressed with Boots improving. If I keep sleeping 10-12 hours a night I might be able to cope with going back to work next week...

Fortunately I didn't have to use it on the toilet! I had a heat-light thing in a recessed unit in my bathroom ceiling and whenever I tried to change the bulb it'd just turn and turn in my hand and never come out. Then Dad came over and tried and it did the same thing, and he said that the professionals have a suction thing that they push on and just turn that, and I said "I have a suction thing!" And I brought out the toilet plunger, and he pushed it on and turned it and lo, the lightbulb came down!

--

Then I came around to my parents' house for a sister's birthday and my Mum was talking about having a lot of bad poems and some good ones and trying to work out how to get more good ones. So I said "Write more bad ones." ...I keep meaning to do this with my own writing.

--

And then I came and talked with my sisters and I learned of knowyourmeme.com which I'm hoping is not quite as addictive as TV Tropes.

But not here. For the interest of people who are interested in this sort of thing, I've just posted the first of what's to be a regular linkdump on the Outer Alliance blog. Focused on the intersection of LGBT and speculative fiction, but also including much that is either one or the other.

(Suggestions of links for next week's dump are always welcome.)

And if you're interested in this sort of thing, there's lots of other interesting stuff on the Outer Alliance blog.

It turns out there's a right way and a wrong way of offering unsolicited advice and help to random strangers.

Some weeks ago, someone solicitously advised me that I oughtn't to use my laptop at my bus-stop in the evenings in this part of town. I said I was happy taking the risk. At which, much offended that I wasn't taking his advice, he said huffily, "Well, I hope nothing bad happens to you." I may not have sounded terribly sincere when I returned the good wishes word for word to him. As soon as someone invents lolcat videos, this scene gets tagged with "Chivalry: ur doin it wrong".

And probably around about the same time, I read a conversation on the interweb about respecting a woman's "no" instead of asking again and again on the assumption that she's just playing hard to get. In frustration some guy announced, "Okay, ladies: if I ask you out and you say no, that's it: I won't ask you out again!" At which I blinked and thought, "...Um, this is supposed to abash us? If only everyone did that as a matter of course!"

(I think he was operating under the assumption that only men can ask women out. If that were true, then his only asking once means that a woman only has that one chance to say yes or no, so his taking her no at face value when she means yes would be a disaster. But it's not true. She can say no, and see him turning away, and if she wants she can run after him and say, "Actually yes." Or if she means no but changes her mind an hour, day, week, year later, she can phone him up and say, "Hey, if you're still interested, would you like to go out with me?" And then the ball's in his court again.)

So, bearing in mind this pattern where someone makes an offer, is refused courteously enough, and responds to the refusal with anger or cajoling or the like...

Last night I was walking down the street from one bus stop, where the bus was 18 minutes late, to another, which has a telepathic doodacky that tells you when the next bus is coming. I was glancing behind myself as I went in case the bus overtook me on the way, and as I did this a car full of young guys pulled up alongside me. I prepared for wolf-whistles. Conversation ensued:

Driver: "Hey, d'you need a ride somewhere?"

Me: "Nah, I'm good, thanks."

Driver: "Okay!"

And he cheerfully did a U-ie and drove off; and I blinked a couple of times and walked cheerfully on to my bus stop.

"No, thanks."

"Okay!"

It was that simple.

...which has been sitting at the bottom of my lunchbag for a few days getting bruised. This (plus contrast with pickles) makes it very sweet -- and also just a little, ah, 'fizzy'.