All posts by Abi

About Me, Politics, Who can categorise everything?

Not dead, nor yet a zombie

2 Comments

[insert typical “sorry I don’t blog here more often” paragraph]

The fact of the matter is that I am still writing, rather a lot, over at Making Light, a blog owned by my friends Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden1.

This is kind of unfair to everyone who keeps looking here for news of me. I know this. I’m going to start doing pointers to Making Light when I’ve posted something there that people here might be interested in, and hanging out here for people who want to talk about those things with me rather than a large crowd of strangers2.

My most recent post is about the quilt that I made this spring: Works and Days of Hands. It’s also about the process of making something like that, and how process and design mirrored each other for me.

Fibonacci spiral quilt: front Fibonacci spiral quilt: back

Another post I really enjoyed writing was Op anger tale, which is an exploration of the relationship between a particular Dutch dialect and Wikipedia.

One thing I’ve been talking about over there, rather a lot, has been the US health care situation. The conversation can get quite heated from time to time, of course, but that heat has certainly caused me to clarify and reaffirm my own beliefs in this matter.

  1. That phrasing makes it sound like we were friends, and then I pitched up on their blog. Really, it was the other way round.
  2. Though many of my friends here are also friends on Making Light, it’s a smaller group.

Sonnets

Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock

The lizard rests and thinks it’s quite alone
Since now that pesky Spock lies poisoned by.
But then the twisted scissors catch its eye
And darting to evade them, it meets stone.
For poisoned Spock, before it was too late
Was briefly vanished from the universe
Then, in a sudden, startling reverse
Returned when his disproof the lizard ate.
The stone, with reptile innards slimed, in paper
Now is wrapped. And thus it blunts the blades
Of snipping, snapping scissors. Then it fades
As phaser-blasts reduce its bulk to vapor.
I know the winning choice is purely random
But entry and amusement run in tandem.

Originally posted on Tor.com

Personal

How to sour a community, in one easy lesson

8 Comments

Simple. Tell them that they’re not one.

It won’t destroy it, of course. Wherever a group of people collaborate for a common endeavor, there we find community.

But communities come in different flavors. My favorite kind includes a substantial amount of trust among the community members, and between them and their leaders/moderators. They are often powerfully goal-oriented, whether the goal is to build something or simply to have good conversation. These ones are electrifying to be a member of. Shared endeavors and a sense of shared ownership seem to actually create energy.

Other communities, however, just depress everyone. A group of rules lawyers, whose shared energy is absorbed in the feeling that bad behavior is punished but good actions go unrewarded, is still a community. It’s just not a very pleasant one. One doesn’t go out and evangelize for such a community or for what it does. One doesn’t hope that others will come join it.

(There is a third kind of community to be mindful of, of course. A mob, like a depressive community, is a common failure mode of an energized community.)

The breakdown of trust is of course the most common reason that the first kind of community turns into the second. It’s easy, particularly as a leader or moderator, to feel betrayed by everyone when the crowd goes in a direction that you don’t want it to. And the fear of the mob is a powerful motivator. The temptation is to lock everything down, pretend that there is no community ethos but the one you provide.

But people don’t work that way. Clamp down on a community, and it turns sour; the community spirit becomes one of grumbling and nit-picking conformance to the stated rules. Spontaneous action for the common good, being unrewarded, goes away.

I’ve seen online communities go completely sour at this point, as the members in their turn feel betrayed by the moderators. Subsequent events just confirm the mutual hostility. Eventually many of these things break up completely.

This isn’t universal; sometimes the shared endeavor of the community is motivating enough to overcome the mutual mistrust. Gradually, a new balance is found; member behavior builds moderator trust and moderator trust reduces member resentment.

Communities may recover in time, but it’s not a pleasant process.

This rather discouraged rant has been brought to you by the letter M and the number 2.

Doggerel & Pastiches

Pyramids

(To the tune of “Fields of Gold” by Sting)

You’ll remember me when the sandstorms blow
Among the low mastabas
You’ll forget Lord Ra in his shining boat
As we guard the pyramids.
So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Upon the low mastabas
Her sarcophagus was their shelter then
Among the pyramids.

Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the low mastabas?
You’ll forget your time in the living world
As we sleep in pyramids.
See the sandstorms blow wearing down the stones
That make the low mastabas
Feel her cerements as the wrap you round
Inside her pyramid.

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear to you in the days still left
We’ll sleep in pyramids
We’ll sleep in pyramids.

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the low mastabas
And the time has come now to rise again
Among the pyramids
We will show these men what it means to fear
Those who guard the pyramids
Those who guard the pyramids
Those who guard the pyramids

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Fire and chains

(To the tune of “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor)

Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone
Suzanne, the zombie bite put an end to you
I went down to the graveyard, you were lurching along
I just don’t know what I should do with you.

I’ve tried fire and I’ve tried chains
I’ve tried starving you, but the moaning never ends
I’ve had lonely times when you’ve frightened all my friends
But I always know that you’re craving my brains.

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus
You’ve got to help me to make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day.
My bite wound is aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way.

I’ve tried fire and I’ve tried chains
I’ve tried feeding you, but the hunger never ends
I’ve had lonely times since I’m shunned by all my friends
But I always know that you’re craving my brains.

Been walking my mind in a fever dream with my back up against the wall
Lord knows when the others come they’ll be tearing me to bits
There’s no more time for the might have beens, there’s no more time at all
The door is breaking in and I’m scared out of my wits.

Oh, I’ve tried fire and I’ve tried chains
I’ve tried holding you, but the biting never ends
I’ve had lonely times since you’ve eaten all my friends
But I always knew you’d get me, baby, try to eat my brains
Thought you’d end up eating all my brains
There’s just a few more seconds till you get me down, now
Thought I’d save you, thought I’d win with fire and chains, now

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Box of earth, be my home

(To the tune of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver)

Almost heaven, Transylvania
East Carpatians,
Cold Prahova river.
I lived long there
Lurking in the trees
Hunting in the mountains
Drifting on the breeze.

Box of earth, be my home
Be the place I belong
Transylvania brought to London,
Box of earth, be my home.

All my powers root themselves there
Superstitious peasants live in terror
Mountain refuge, under moonless sky,
Salty taste of warm blood
Wolf-pack in full cry.

Box of earth, be my home
Be the place I belong
Transylvania brought to London,
Box of earth, be my home.

I hear its voice
‘Cross the salty seas it calls me
Scent of earth reminds me of my castle far away
And flying in the dark I get the feeling
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Box of earth, be my home
Be the place I belong
Transylvania brought to London,
Box of earth, be my home.

Originally posted on Making Light

Family

Alex deduces

5 Comments

Yesterday, Alex turned to his dad and told him there was no such thing as the Tooth Fairy.

Apparently, lying in his bed the night after Christmas, he had started thinking. He knows fairies don’t exist1. The Tooth Fairy is a fairy. Therefore, she doesn’t exist.

But he didn’t stop there. He went on to consider the problem of the exchange of teeth for money. Was there a more plausible agent than the now-deprecated fairy? Of course there was; he knows that I creep into his bedroom every night after he’s asleep to give him one last kiss and tell him that I love him.

So he reckoned that Martin or I would exchange the tooth for money in the night.

Coincidentally, he lost a tooth yesterday evening. He considered setting a booby trap to catch whoever was doing the money exchange3. But he forgot to put the tooth under his pillow last night. I’d left it on the shelf in my bindery.

*** 4

This morning, I was in the bindery getting a hair stick. I called him in and pointed to the shelf where his tooth had been last night, and where a nice shiny Euro coin was now sitting.

He laughed and laughed. He accused me; I said I’d left a tooth there the night before and there was a coin there now. He reckoned it was his dad instead.

He won’t take the coin, either. Principled little guy.

  1. Why? I told him, in the context of Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, and it accords with his very good reality/fantasy distinction2
  2. Unlike his reality/science fiction distinction, which is weak
  3. He’s capable of it; he has a couple of kiddie spy kits that have motion sensor alarms.
  4. This is a Murder of Roger Ackroyd reference, if you are familiar with the book.

Doggerel & Pastiches

Song of Plums

(One of a series of pastiches of other poems to the plot of William Carlos William’s Plums)

I sleep, but my tongue craveth:
it is the scent of my beloveds that tempteth, saying,
Open to us, our eater, our vore,
our predator, our hungry one:
for our skins are covered with frost
and our stones with the chill of the icebox.

I have put off my bathrobe;
how shall I put it on?
I have brushed my teeth;
how shall I defile them?

My beloveds wafted their scent past the holes of my nostrils,
and my tongue was moistened for them.

I rose up to open to my beloveds;
and my hands dripped with juice,
and my fingers with sweet sticky juice
upon the handle of the icebox.

I opened to my beloveds;
but my beloveds had withdrawn themselves and were gone:
my soul failed when I smelled them:
I sought them, but I could not find them;
I sniffed the air, but smelled them not.

The roommate that goes about the flat found me,
He shrugged at me, he denied all knowledge;
The sharer of the icebox took away my plums from me.

I charge you, O lovers of Damsons,
if ye find my beloveds, that ye tell them,
that I am sick of hunger.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

The stone-fruits of Gondolin

The morning dawned clear and bright, and Gandalf rose early to walk along the terraces and slopes above the loud-flowing Bruinen. The rising sun shone pale and wan through the silver mist, and the webs of the spiders glistened among the trees. On a small bench beside the path he came upon Elrond, who rose to greet him.

“Fine is the morning and fortunate the meeting, O Mithrandir! Long have I sat here contemplating the paths that lie before us, and now find myself in need of sustenance. I have in my cool-rooms a hoard of stone-fruits from Gondolin, which I would gladly share with you.”

“Many years has it been,” replied Gandalf, “since I have tasted the stone-fruits of Gondolin. They grow now but sparsely among the fallen stones of that once fair city.”

Elrond rose and led the way to his cool-rooms, which stood in a shadowed corner of the Last Homely House, sheltered from the sunlight by the high walls of the building around them. There he kept many foods from all over Middle-Earth, cooled by great blocks of ice carried down from the Misty mountains.

The thick stone door of the cool-rooms stood ajar. Elrond and Gandalf entered to find Pippin seated on a wooden chest, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. Beside him lay a small pile of fruit-stones, the last traces of golden flesh still clinging to them.

“Hullo, Gandalf! Hullo, Elrond! I just popped in here for a little something to eat. It’s a long time yet to breakfast, and waiting is hungry work, as my gaffer always says.”

Elrond stood still within the doorway, but Gandalf strode forward. “Gluttonous fool of a Took! You have eaten the stone-fruits of Gondolin, which we had preserved in the cool-room for our breakfast!”

“Forgive me,” cried the hobbit, cringing before the wizard’s wrath. “They were so sweet and so cold that I could hardly resist them!”

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Scenes from Dr Horrible: Friendship is Magic

Dr Horsible:
A stallion must run
Where a stallion must run
Don’t join the race
If you can’t be number one.

All that matters
Taking matters firmly by the bit
Soon I’ll control everything
And to your reins submit

Captain Hammer:
Slow down, everyone,
Drop out of the race
Let the winner by
I will set the pace.

Yes, Captain Hammer’s here
Mane flowing as I trot
The race needs a star, and I’m so hot.

A stallion must run where a stallion must run
It seems the real race has only just begun
The only way to lose is if we don’t finish tied
So I’ll slow up and we’ll go side by side.

– o0o –

It may not make you bigger
Letting humans ride
But you know who does that? Trigger.
He carried Roy with pride.

So you wonder what your part is
Because you’re saddled and repressed
But freedom’s where your heart is
So you freedom’s in your chest.

Everyone’s a stallion in their own way
Everyone can rear and neigh and paw.
Just not as high as me
But ponies, you can still look on with awe

Everyone’s a stallion in their own way
In own My Little Pony way.

Originally posted on Making Light