who only by moving can balance

(Still from finch's list of questions/prompts.)

vaginapagina, obviously, because it's my baby ;) But it is getting intermittent updates from people who aren't me, and we are getting some discussion in comments, so!

Seeing more activity in dw_dev_training would make me happy, because I like babydevs and I like it when people feel confident enough to ask questions.

Obviously I'd always like more activity in white_lotus, because that means more on-DW activity in the fandom of my heaaaaaaaart ;-)

nuggan always brightens my day when it gets updated, so that too!

---

Manchester is REALLY LOVELY you guys, I had never visited before (at least not since germination) and it is SO PRETTY. I am REALLY enjoying it.

Also I got namechecked in the dw_news post! I am a bit ♥_______♥ about this, seriously, because wow. And it reminds me that I really should get around to making my list of ways I volunteer for Dreamwidth that don't involve coding, because I suspect that could be useful/of interest to other people... actually, it might go into This One Other Essay I am contemplating writing. Hmmmmmm.

[A white bowl with three spoons propped in it. A pile of green ice in the middle is surrounded by a moat of green liquid, and is topped with a red paste and a series of small black balls.]

This delight, ladies gents and everyone else, is the shaved ice dessert I have just grumpily pulled out of a food processor by myself because everyone else was too busy comparing terrifyingly complex family tree structures/referents among themselves.

It contains:

• shaved ice (well, sort of)
  
• pandan essence (hence the BRIGHT GREEN)
  
• coconut cream
  
• condensed milk
  
• red bean paste
  
• tapioca pearls (boba)

... and it is delicious.

- around these parts, the phrase "nobody LIKES ME everybody HATES ME going down the garden to SET UP AN OKCUPID ACCOUNT" has gained common currency. This morning I had cause to invoke it, and actually went to OKCupid. To my horror, from my point of view on sign-up forms, FetLife is actually less faily than OKCupid. Given that FetLife includes "Trans - Male-to-Female" etc as standalone gender categories... ye-ah.

- the surname "Adhemar" has just turned up as the legit honest-to-goodness name of an active researcher in approximately my field. Shit.

- fret fret fret

- burnt the tagine, and the horrible gooseberry crumble is so horrible I'm not sure I'm going to be able to convince anyone to eat it (made in a desperate attempt to use up both flapjack crumbs and five tins of gooseberries in syrup I inherited; please don't ask)

+ made enough food yesterday to last us for a while, including RED BEAN PASTE, which means I had RED BEAN PASTE AND CONDENSED MILK ON CRUMPETS for breakfast it was GRAND

+ Station Cycles got in the 24x1" inners I asked them for, sold them to me for £4.99 a pop, and were all round fantastic. i♥them

+ my dreaded brown envelope from the DWP arrived... telling me that I was entitled to DLA, it had been automatically renewed, etc. I do not even know what to do with this, other than flail squeakily a lot

+ all our shower gel now has "MANLY MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN" written on it in permanent marker

Angel: potato
Wesley: parsnip
Giles: sweet potato
Spike: radish
Nathan Fillion: (this particular) butternut squash (that I'm keeping on my wheelchair)

hi everyone we've finished s5/s2

MEANWHILE, in a conversation about knees, and the technical term for the bit between knee and shin viz "oh the fucked-up bit that swells up and goes all puffy":
noldo: I'd be a platypus. And move to Vladivostok.
Awesome Housemate C.: ... there are no platypodes in Russia.
noldo: I'D BE A PIONEER.
noldo: anyway once upon a time there were no human beings in Russia
noldo: SOMEONE HAD TO MOVE THERE
woozl: that is strictly true
woozl: anyway Vladivostok is only in Russia by recent political standards

in which I am a geologist and busy being baffled by the fact that my atmospheric chemistry courses consider ten years a long time

I am delighted to present to you today this account of our investigations on the subject of precipitation. The research team comprised myself, noldo and mustela_nivalis; I acted as primary fieldworker due to my ability to pass unsuspected among the natives, of both Angle and Saxon origin (though we note that our conviction that the custom of intermarriage has been carried out so assiduously that no real distinction between these groups can be made). In experimental design we took great care to avoid unduly biasing the result: our population surveys used such innocuous techniques as striking up conversations about the weather, making sure to employ only culturally-neutral terms such as "hot", "dry", "wet" and "pissing it down".

The Britisch institution of the "Met Office" (previously Meteorological Office, established in 1854) and the quasi-religious ritual of the "Shipping Forecast" form the focus of a cultural obsession. Indeed the Poet Laureate, one Carol Ann Duffy, was appointed to the post following publication of her poem Prayer: the final couplet references the aforementioned Shipping Forecast, reflecting a conservative and totalitarian attitude to religious praxis within this nation-state.

These observations indicate that the cultural pastimes of "discussing the weather" and "listening to the forecast", while superficially innocuous or secular, betray a deep and abiding preoccupation with the prevailing atmospheric conditions, with particular emphasis on the phenomenon of "rain". We draw this conclusion in part due to the wide range of biological terms used to describe liquid precipitation: ranging in intensity from "spitting" to "pissing", accompanied by a variety of descriptors less intensely focussed on bodily functions, we estimate that Britischers have in common currency as many as forty-two distinct words describing precipitation in its liquid form.

The verdant and misty island inhabited by these curious peoples possesses a maritime climate; ergo, runs the widely-accepted causal relationship, the unhealthy cultural focus on rain to be found among these natives. Naturally we do not seek to pass value judgments on the local customs; this notwithstanding, medical literature is filled with descriptions of the negative effects on childhood growth and lung development resulting from damp environments. We wish to highlight the famous case study of the man who was "not depressed, just British [sic]" (Utne Reader, 2005).

We propose a new sociological model in which rain plays a more nuanced role. In particular, we note that the prevailing mythology of the natives, Christianity (Anglicanism), contains a pivotal event in which a deluge floods the entire world; the receding of the flood waters is accompanied by a rainbow, which in other areas where this religion is practised is interpreted as a promise of hope for the future. Field work suggests that the common exegesis within the Britisch Islets differs significantly: in that it is not the rainbow that is the sign of hope, but the rain itself, delivered to wash away the sins of the world, in congruence with later imagery associated with baptism.

We here suggest that the Britischers have developed folk mythology that enables them to interpret local climate as an indication that they are "blessed by God" (c.f. Jerusalem, William Blake, 1804). We believe that this long-standing belief was in fact the driving force behind "missionary zeal" and "colonialism": the primary concern was clearly not Christianity per se, nor even natural resources (for many countries inconvenienced by the expeditions of these primitive folk are in fact arid), but rather the fervent commitment of the Britischers to spreading the Word regarding the power of rain.

This brief letter represents a significant step forward in understanding the feedbacks between behaviour, culture and climate within the Britisch Islets: we welcome further discussion on this burning issue.

noldo: But what if you put metaphorical pants on the lizard?