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It's not the principles that kill you in the end, it's the books. - Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. - Wittgenstein
Never express yourself more clearly than you think. - Niels Bohr
A labyrinthian man never looks for the truth, but only for his Ariadne. - Nietzsche
What else do you do with dark and sinister forces but play with them? - Deadlock, Khronicles of Khaos
There are three things that are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third. - Valmiki, the Ramayana
If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language and you're dumb and blind. - Salman Rushdie
Even the oldest stories are new to somebody. - Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones
Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories... because one isn't always equal to oneself. - Primo Levi
When you set out for Ithaca, ask that your way be long. - Constantine Cavafy
"You can't do that", she said. "You can't have 'fairy tales' without 'fair'! And stuff you find out by determining what words are inside other words is never wrong. Now drink more tea." - Hitherby Dragons |
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Recipe as requested by weegoddess. Part 1: Take a generous pile of red lentils - I don't generally measure anything so I can't be more precise. Pour in a generous glug of soy sauce and a sprinkling of sea salt, and top up with cold water. Put it on to heat, and cook the lentils as you would normally - boil them for 15 minutes or so. I skim the foam off the top when it's boiling, but you don't have to if you can't be bothered. Around that point, add in a generous dose of sage and marjoram and leave it to simmer till Done. Part 2: Take a moderate-to-generous amount of bacon, ham, or other dead pig product, chop it into small portions, and fry it up. When it's nice and hot, mix in some spices - I used smoked paprika and some rather nice urfa biber imported as a guest-gift by sunspiral. After a while, turn the heat up to 11, toss it around a bit, and pour in a large glug of red wine vinegar or suitable substitute (either red wine or balsamic vinegar work well) and let that bubble off in a fun dramatic manner. When that's glazed on and there's no liquid left the bacon is done, so set it aside till the lentils are done. Part 3: Add part 2 to part 1, and stir them around on the heat till they reach a suitable consistency. Then serve! Tags: food
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The very rich are not like you and I. No, they have more money.
Yes, this is a post about Boris Johnson. Feel free to skip. A lot of the Boris-criticism-criticism I've been seeing lately can be more or less summed up as "don't hate him for being a posh Tory prat". After all, we wouldn't dream of saying that someone wasn't qualified for an elected position because they were too working-class, right? The problem with that is that the two aren't equivalent. Because our Mayor has always been rich, he's always been privileged and insulated - he's been surrounded by other people of his own class, race, and wealth level to a greater extent than any council-estate hoodie, first at private school and then at Oxbridge. He's never been forced to work at something he didn't want to do, never run the risk of homelessness or bad credit, never had to live hand to mouth. (To the best of my knowledge, at least. I may be wrong about that. If so, please correct me.) The fact that he went to Eton depresses me more than the Oxford education - after all, many people manage to get through Oxford without being ruined. (And I should stress that this isn't linked to party affiliation. At the moment, they're all posh gits.) But he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, like Cameron, there. For those of you not familiar with the term, they're a bunch of yobs who dress up in penguin costumes and go out to smash up restaurants. So, like David Cameron (notorious for surrounding himself with others of his own background) he has a far smaller range of people he can identify with, empathise with, and relate to than someone like Ken Livingstone with a more rounded education and socialization. I'm not trying to say he can't, or that he has no interest in it - just that being a posh toff brings with it a lot of disadvantages when it comes to relating to ordinary people, and posh toffs are statistically much more likely to be out of touch with ordinary people than the rest of us are. What I'd like to see - though there are more than a few problems with the idea - is a rule that nobody can stand for public office unless they've spent at least six months on Government benefits in the past. Tags: politics
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I've been wandering through a lot of discussions on the covers of SF&F books in the last few days - the old chestnut about "is this tacky or great?", "Will this put off new readers or will it keep the mundanes out of our genre?", and so on. I may work up a longer ramble on the subject, but I wanted to share my bogglement at one thing with you, O my readers. Someone posted this image, showing the cover of his book, and asked for honest opinions.  Inexplicably, they didn't eviscerate him. There was not even any pointing and laughing. It's pretty good art, as fantasy art goes, but apparently that isn't a joke title or series name. Tags: books, sf
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