God. C is missing. She went to a friend's house, then they took off, and now T doesn't know where she is. The kid does this all the time. T called the cops.

I really, really hope she's okay, and that she's going to get the spanking of her life. This kid once tried to wander off to Wisconsin.

Just got round to reviewing recent pics and have uploaded a bunch including Paradise gardens, the last White Mischief, Kira's vist to London and this weekends masked ball with the Last Tuesday Society.

By the way, if I don't offer drjon a raise in the next few weeks, it's only because he'll have broken my brain. Again. He shared a very interesting tale of how multiple groups of microhylid frogs and large spiders have mutualistic relationships, and that suddenly makes me want to research something I'd spotted in the garden recently. Considering that the paper wasps out by the greenhouse are turning the area into my very own little LV-426, I may be gone for some time.

Kim Pearson's comments on PHB have been scrubbed.

Really.

During "Free Speech Experiment" week.

Take a look at my OH KIM PEARSON NO post from a few days ago; follow the links.

Kim Pearson is the head of TransYouth Family Allies, a group dedicated to helping trans children. She's a good friend of Autumn Sandeen, to the point that when Kim first posted on the Blend, she accidentally used Autumn's account since Autumn never logged off of Kim's computer, the last time Autumn visited Kim in person.

I know this because it was on the discussion thread at PHB, related by Kim herself.

Now it's all mysteriously gone.

Holy fuck.

Pam Spaulding and Autumn Sandeen keep getting lower, and lower, and lower, and lower than I had ever thought possible.

It's pretty clear why: They are protecting Kim from criticism. And editing the public record in order to do so. And not telling anyone.

Meanwhile, I am the dishonest one, because I made a new account under my own name when I was unjustly banned for whistleblowing on Autumn's dishonesty. Pam refuses to deal with the fact that Autumn deliberately mislead PHB's readership in order to save her own skin and demonize me.

Damn.

Update: Here's the google cache, which I've also saved offline (in case it updates). Right now at least, you can clearly see Kim Pearson's comments, including her rather infamous declaration that there's something called "trans privilege."

Everyone who responded to Kim's absurdity also had their replies wiped too, of course.

Update 2: I saved a copy of the google cache, and posted it on my web site here.

My sense of Identity has always been fairly shaky. I find my own impulses and behaviors bizarre. At least once every hour of the day I think: "Why the fuck did I do that? Reaching into the pot of boiling water with my bare hands to pull out a bay leaf? That was crazy. Only crazy people do what I just did."

So not finding the answers in my own introspection I look elsewhere. Namely my relatives, to put the blame on them. I talk to my mom almost every day and we find ourselves not infrequently nostalgic for events from my upbringing or hers. My mother lost a lot of her family too soon. A lucky couple managed to make it long enough to see me born, but none long enough for me to have any real memory of them.

But mom remembers them. And she would tell me their stories, the family history. In our talks the anecdotes come together and a more solid picture of who I am emerges. Why I am the why I am and why I do the things I do. The saga of generations of the women on my mom's side build brick by brick into a sometimes drafty but solid structure.

Although to hear my mother talk you'd figure the foundation was built on one of self inflicted physical trauma...

GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHER, ALMA~1964
Alma was a massive woman. A swedish immigrant, she stood about 6 foot and had a size 12 shoe. She wore massive thick glasses now that she was getting into her sixties. Despite her brawny stature she loved feminine things like interior decorating. As a matter of fact Alma's favorite hobby was to go out at night fall in her Baltimore neighborhood when the homes are lighted and she could see through the windows at how people had done up their living rooms.
One night she was engrossed in her walk. Walking slowly enough to get a really good eyeful but quickly enough to not look like someone casing a joint for home invasion. She was passing a house, head turned fully to the picture window and thinking something along the lines of: "I would never have put that tiffany lamp next to that painting..." When she faced it into a "No Parking sign. Hard.
Alma put the entire right side of her body in to the pole of the sign, breaking her giant glasses and bruising herself from hairline to knee.

"She had to walk around like that for weeks explaining to people what had happened." Mom said. "She didn't want people to think granddad hit her so she wound up telling the truth."

GRANDMOTHER, ELEANOR~ 1955
Eleanor and her husband Barney had just bought their first home in Glenn Park, Baltimore and were celebrating and doing a little home repair. Eleanor LOVED whiskey sours and had had about three of them when she noticed that the kitchen ceiling could really use a new coat of paint.

So she fixed her self a fourth, lit a fresh cigarette and got out the oil based white paint and roller and climbed on top of the big gas stove. She rolled on the paint with one hand and drank her whiskey sour with the other, cigg dangling form her lip all the while. A combination of liquor, paint fumes and new home owned euphoria made her giddy.
She finished as much of the corner over the stove as she could reach and slurped her fifth drink. With great satisfaction in her domestic skill she turned on her heel and walked straight off of the stove and hung in the open air for a split second before belly flopping onto the linoleum.

"You mean she COMPLETELY forgot she was on top of the stove?!" I asked my mom after she told me this story.
"Oh, yes." She replied. "Mom told me she was pretty surprised when she saw the ground rising up to meet her."

MOTHER, GWENDOLYN~ 1988
four years after I was born my parents moved us to Pottstown, Pennsylvania, located in a rural area about an hour outside of Philly. We had lived there for maybe six months when the day for bulk trash pick up came around. People would huck furniture, dead refrigerators and other unwanted items onto the street to be taken away by the trash men.
Now there was an enormous, ancient steel trashcan in our garage that Mom wanted to get rid of but she was a bit worried about just putting it out on the curb. What if the trash collectors thought it was just a regular trashcan and left it? Then she hit on an Idea. Crumple it! That way it would really look like garbage!

Now my mother is not a big woman and yet for some reason she is under the impression that she is. It was this misguided self perception that led her to figure that she could somehow crush this 90 gallon steel bin with her own body weight.
So she dragged a chair over next to the can and climbed up. She readied herself for a moment and then leaped in to the air, right into the middle of the trashcan. The can, instead of buckling neatly in the middle, acted as a trampoline and catapulted my mother ACROSS the garage and into the opposite wall. She laid on the floor in a heap for a few minutes then gingerly got up and limped past the defiant trashcan back into the house.
She sat on the sofa with an ice pack and watched cartoons with me as I played with my new happy meal toy until daddy came home.
When she told him what happened he just looked at her for a minute.
"Why...didn't you just tape a sign to it that said, "TRASH, PLEASE TAKE."?"

"Oh, I don't know, Chris." My mother looked resentfully at my father and shifted her ice pack to her shoulder. "Maybe because I'm STUPID?"

DAUGHTER, LEIA~ 1991

We were still in Pottstown. The property we lived on was vast and beautiful, especially in the summer. every thing was in bloom and flowers bobbed in the sultry heat, the grasses and leaves a shade of green that was so vibrant it hurt the eyes. But my favorite part of our yard was the Dogwoods. There were about seven of them dotting the front and back of our house and all of them proud and strong, the branches stretching wide and heave with four petaled white blossoms. All except one.

A few yards away from the front door was a dogwood that was close to death. It had been pruned back several time and most of the bark had rotted away. In the hollowed interior of the trunk a hive of Yellow Jackets had built their nest. The flew in and out of a knothole about half way up. I watched them on their errands for about a week in mid july until one day I decide I was going to fix their little red wagon.

Now I tell people that what came next was born of a scientific curiosity. That both of my parents were scientists and had instilled in me an interest in the natural world and how creatures react to new stimuli.
But more likely an explaination is that I was full of piss and vinager and just wanted to pick on something smaller than myself.

Which is why I picked up a small stick and wedged it into the entrance of the nest and stood back a few feet to see what would happen.

A slow trickle of yellow jackets formed at the blocked entrance, confused as to why the front door was now firmly blocked. Then a swarm accumulated.

Then one of the little fuckers got wise and realized the JUST MAYBE the little flesh beast standing nearby was the culprit and stung me on the back of the calf. I jumped and yelped, at which point the entire cluster of bees turned their multi-faceted eyes to me at once and began pursuit.

Our kitchen looked out over the backyard and my mother was washing dishes when she saw me come sprinting and wailing around the house to go diving into the playhouse they'd build for me and slam the door.

"She's SO excitable." My mother thought and put another dish in the drying rack.

After about twenty minutes of hurling their little exoskeletons against the playhouse door they finally lost interest and I dragged my swollen leg up to the house to cry on my parents. Dad dutifully avenged me by taking a can of raid and wreaking destruction upon the hive.


...I may not have known my Great Great Grandmother or my Grandmother but they come alive when my mother talks about them. The way she spins their histories I feel like maybe I can know them and that the four of us are bound in blood and similarities that disregard time or mortality.

The three of them reach from the grave and out across generational differences with their smooth dry hands and clap me on the shoulder when I fuck something up badly. With their massive palms, their cigarette stained fingers or cracked knuckles the give a reassuring squeeze and say: "It's ok, kid. Sure, you just broke a heel and fell off the curb in broad daylight while a crowd of people watched. But you're gonna be alright. You're gonna be FINE."

"It's happened to all of us."

First, a sales bump. I've added some Warrior Queen decants-Jingu, Hua Mulan, Tomoe Gozen (perfumes and bath oils) and there are still some full bottles of some of the bath oils!

And the ISOs. I was going to post a swap post of rarities to swap for other rarities, but thought I'd better not, considering the recent events. I'm saddened to hear of it, my hugs go out to everyone affected. I really hope this doesn't spoil future swapping of rare scents-not just for me, but for anyone who wishes to genuinely swap bona fide rares for other rare scents and spread the BPAL love. (Though If anyone is still interested in those rares I have, let me know.)

But anyway, here are some ISOs of stuff which isn't as hard to come by for now:

-I am after a bottle of Boadicea perfume-full or partial (at least half full or more). This is my new 'power scent'. I don't need the bath oil-I have enough in my decant. So if anyone wants to a) sell me an unwanted bottle or b) split an order with me, let me know.

-I adore the Ysabel bath oil that smells of CARNATION! with just a little incense to gild it. Think Lush's Potion carnation. But my backup bottle smells of incense and rose? It's beautiful but it isn't CARNATION! So if you don't want your carnation-crammed Ysabel bath oil, let me know! I will accept any amount of this, decants too.

Since I'm not going to post the color Tom Bombadil piece until after the 20th or so, I thought you might like to have a look at some unpublished STARCHILD stuff.

This is the splash illustration from a short story called "TwoPenny Serenade".

I'm no photographer and such, but I did find this interesting series of pictures whilst cruising the web: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/05/magazine/20090705-gilded-slideshow_index.html

At BlogHer:

http://www.blogher.com/jobs


At Wikimedia:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings


Do apply!!!

This entry was originally posted at http://badgerbag.dreamwidth.org/306331.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

And on the subject of pure beauty, the Czarina spotted a beautiful century plant agave blooming the next street over from us, and took photos over the past two months. No, really: take a look. Not only do you get a look at a stunning display that neither of us will probably ever see again, but you get to see me five kilos lighter than how I ended last spring.

No particular reason for this, other than that there's some tv programmes over the next few weeks leading up to the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing.

On 27^th January 1967, three astronauts - Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee - died when pure oxygen in the capsule of what would have been Apollo 1 ignited.

On the following Monday, flight director Eugene Kranz (the bloke portrayed by Ed Harris in the movie Apollo 13) called a meeting of his branch and flight control team. During that meeting , he said the following, what became known in NASA as The Kranz Dictum:

"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!'

I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause!

We were not ready! We did not do our job.

We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.'

Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.

Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.

When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."

More yummies added HERE!!

Thanks for taking a peek! <3

Warning: This is about Pam's House Blend.

According to multiple reports on Questioning Transphobia (in the comments of several posts), trans people on Pam's House Blend are being silently silenced.

No big dramatic "I'M BANNING U NOW" posts as Pam did for me, but quietly, surely, trans people who have been critical of Spaulding, Sandeen, or the cissexist chorus are finding themselves unable to post again the Blend, when they've had no problems before.

Naturally, Pam isn't responding to anyone about this; part of being In Charge means not being accountable to the lowly masses.

Pam will do anything to maintain cis privilege at PHB.

Hiya,  It's the usual for me. Looking for the following bottles, fill level does not matter at all.   I can trade sterling silver jewelery, handmade beaded pieces, and I also have a shannon crystal pagoda for trading. Right now it houses imps, but I'd like to trade it, as it was a gift from an ex.


I will shortly have a bottle/pretty full partial of Monster Bait Underbed.  While I am hoping for it to be love, I know my skin.  It will also probably be up for trade.



Tezcatlipoca
Calico Jack
How doth the little crocodile
Stinky
Kathmandu
Ultraviolet
Golden Priapus
Utrennyaya
Dragons Hide
High Priest not to be Described

Jeff VanderMeer over at Omnivoracious: apparently he likes them. Now if they'd just sell.

Yes, lots of pictures. But this only happens once every 100 years, or so. (Depends on the plant.)

This plant has to be at least over fifty, just based on size. I hope the owners of said plant know how lucky they are.
( Read more... )
Nature continues to amaze me. :)