It wasn't a meme --- but drat it, it should be. dragonfare, "in the tradition of the holiday," listed what she was thankful for. She was thankful for a lot of various things -- but my list seems to come down to people..... Some of them online, some in real life, one or two in both places....

So first, if there ever was a theme song for the last year, this was it... I am thankful that we made it through the year. And we managed to breathe. We are still breathing.


Lyrics | Anna Nalick lyrics - Breathe lyrics

Then, specifically....

In real life....

You really, seriously want to ask an ex-librarian about this? Less than two months after Banned Books Week?

God, it's so tempting to answer The Illustrated Meese Report. (I knew a library professor who swears he once had to put that on reserve for a college art class... He said the problem wasn't locating it at the porn shop -- the problem was getting the porn shop to figure out how to fill out and submit a state institution tax exempt form.)

The problem with banning books is no one ever agrees on what should be banned. And why we should ban it.

So, instead I give you the American Library Association's Banned Books Week lists as food for thought. How many of the following books have you heard of? What would you bring a censorship challenge against?

First, a recent list of banned and challenged classics from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. (Note that on this report only those in BOLDFACE were challenged, not all of these. However at least some others listed have been challenged in the past. The Lord of the Rings for instance....)

Then, The 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000, The 100 most frequently challenged books of 2000-2007, and Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2008.

What have you read???

(edited to explain the banned and challenged classics list better -- bolded and colored the note)

So much to say, and so little time.

So instead:

Happy Birthday Scorpio babies!

Nightfire, today!

And day after tomorrow, my husband Phizzbin!

visited 22 states (44%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Where I've been. 

It doesn't include the train ride east.  On the other hand it does include driving back and forth between South Dakota and Louisiana, and a trip made when we were kids that included Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.  So maybe I should have included that train ride???  Hmmmmm.....

Martha Grimes' amateur detective Melrose Plant.  Failing that Martha Grimes' C.I.D. Superintendent Richard Jury.  Jury is a dish... But all in all I'd rather have Plant -- he's intelligent, good looking, and a total goof.  And he drinks good quality beer.  I want to sit in the local pub and drink it with him....

Grokked from mythc_writer:

The problem with journal sites: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

And, from the Astronomy Picture of the Day -- a link to a YouTube of a Solar Storm in September. And you thought YouTube was just for AMVs....

So -- some efriends and I started a community where you can claim a cartoon guy (or gal...).  (And dragonfare - I'm afraid I told them about the AL harems and the friend who set up the community ('cause she knows how to do it) sorta copped the name -- I really hope you don't mind and aren't offended....).

So -- I present: Claim a Cartoon Hottie at community.livejournal.com/bishie_harem_2/profile

And right now, the only claims are the ones we've made ourselves.  So if we can't pimp out our own community, what can we pimp out?  We really need some members....

Unlike most "claim a bishie" threads, we aren't setting exclusives.  Too many people want the same cartoon guy (or girl) and someone always beats them to their desire.  So more than one person can claim someone -- and we'll let you stake a claim on up to ten.  We also are let both both sexes claim people.  Too many communities are oriented only towards women -- like guys never wanted anyone?  Come on -- my husband wants both Elastigirl and Jessie of Team Rocket.  (Him and his red-heads...)

Stolen from mythc_writer:

1. My username is ____ because ____.
2. My journal is titled ____ because ____.
3. My subtitle is ____ because ____.
4. My friends page is called ____ because ____.
5. My default userpic is ____ because ____.

So....

1. "Starwefter" -- I've explained this before, but I always try first for Dark Star. Then for Starweaver. Usually both fail. Starwefter is my own variation on Starweaver. The warp is the long fastened down threads of a weave, the weft goes back and forth, it's the thread carried on the shuttle, so Starwefter is just a variation of Starweaver. I don't do regular weaving as such, but I am known to card (tablet) weave. (Note to self, must finish weaving that long trim.....)

2. "Starwefter's (Dark Star's) Hangout" -- well, duh, given the above. Not very creative I'm afraid. I couldn't get Dark Star here; it was taken. But the people who led me here already knew me as Dark Star on a forum, so I wanted them to recognize it was me. And hangout is just old hippie-speak.

3. "just another niche in the wall..." -- Gah -- can I get any more uncreative? I guess it's because when I started this it just seemed like a tiny hole in the wall of the great city called the internet. Compare this to the awesome titles of some of my friend's journals: trellia_chan's Mind Expansion and Synchronicity: Just WHAT am I thinking?!?; webmyrcury 's The small star that shines far in the night sky: ...don't lose, it's shining so much now; kirakira_kirimi's Vegetarian Sushi; oakenking's Clues for the Clueless: ... following Ariadne's thread (which makes sense for him, he raise silk moths and is one of the experts on sericulture in the U.S.; his website is called wormspit.com); cindy_73's Nightfire's Dark Demented Mind: What's in the Mind of the Moof?; phizzbin's My Bliss Trip: musings from the edge...; and my two favorites -- dragonfare 's This is my story: but you can be in it; and wishwords' Will You Get Lost With Me?: I Know the Way.

Yeah. Next to that, I'm just boring....

4. "Friends are the family you find on the way..." -- I did better with this, didn't I? A friend of mine says this all the time, and it's true isn't it? There is the family you are born into and then there's the one you find. Sometimes the one you find is better than the one you're given. I've been blessed with both.

5.  "So many bishies -- so little time" -- because 15 is just not enough user pics.  I can't fit in all the cartoon hotties; so I had to cram as many of  'em into one icon as possible.  I really wanted Porco Rosso in there also, but just couldn't get the kilobytes down under 40 for LJ.

wishwords posted this in her LJ -- It's about finding a husband. Except it isn't -- it's about breast cancer and surviving, and finding someone who really will support you in sickness and in health. Who meant those words, and who committed to be a life partner, not just a fling in the dark. Who will hold your purse while you go off to fight the battle of your life. And who will still be there holding it when you return.

Will he hold your purse? - The Boston Globe

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Yeah. My kid has flu. Not swine flu. Just the flu.

Good grief -- it's too early to get the flu shot; they say to get it in mid-October to late November -- you're not even supposed to get it this early. And for swine flu there is no shot yet.

So we have swine flu plus two forms of regular flu running around. We are officially the hot spot for our state for swine, and our state isn't the hottest of the hot for the U.S., but is heating up, and definitely in the higher in incidence category already according to the latest CDC tracking map.

Last week he missed three days of school with a plain old head cold.

It's gonna be a long winter.....

Grocked this one from mythc_writer and had to do it because I'd just screencapped and uploaded my wallpaper to my deviantART profile, since it wasn't showing my current one...

01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on.



Do I have five reasons for using this? Hmmmmm.....

1. I made it... I made it with Paint.NET including a few plug-ins, and by using a lot of layers so I could slide things around. Haven't a clue how I made that pastel background anymore, though...
2. It has a nice big open space at the left so it works for how I organize icons, which is one of the reasons I made it. On most wallpapers I end up obscuring part of the picture with my icons and that drives me nuts. I do not like how Windows automatically arranges them. I like things, including icons, organized by type, and if that means one row has five and the next has two, so be it.
3. It also has a small open spot at the top right, just big enough for the two things I run in the sidebar. The little speedometer thingy actually tells how much memory the computer is using which matters at start-up because my computer gets sulky if I start the email or browser before it's finished bringing up everything in the system tray. The moon is just that -- the moon. It displays what phase the moon is in, and if you load your latitude and longitude it even swings around so that the moonshadow actually appears at the correct angle for your location. Sweet!
4. It's extra-wide for its height -- 1920x1200 to be exact -- which means it fits my new extra-wide monitor. Do you know how hard it is to find an extra-wide wallpaper? Another reason I made it -- I couldn't find much of anything to fit....
5. A bunch of my favorite cartoon hotties, all in one wallpaper. In order, more or less left to right and top to bottom, Seto Kaiba, Porco Rosso, Toya, Dean McCoppin, Gaku, Loki, Howl, Jet.

Once in a while someone gives you something too good not to pass on.... jesskat shared this: Before and After: Photoshopped Celebrities.

But in other, more serious news....

First -- well, I have to explain why I know a relative of the person in the attached news stories -- I attend the same church that she does. And so -- uh, yeah -- time to be out of the broom closet, because some of you know already, but I'm Wiccan -- so what am I doing in church? It's a long story, but the short version is I attend Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, and we'll take anyone, even atheists -- so you think being Neopagan is going to bother them?

So, anyway, this week an uncle of one of our members was laid to rest -- well, the circle of life happens, and it's been happening a lot this year. What makes this different is he died in Korea. In 1950.

MIA for 59 years, he finally came home to be buried this week on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

Remains of Korean War soldier return home to South Dakota  and  'The faraway son has returned home'

The Governor ordered the flags flown at half mast statewide.

Rest in Peace.

I finally get to cleaning out my inbox on DA -- scads of things that I haven't had time to look at in ages... Journals, deviations, messages from DA itself... And there, unexpectedly, is this...


Illusionary Path by `zeiva on deviantART

And suddenly I am crying.

I never cry. Not over movies, not over books, not over weddings or funerals or anything.  Why this?

She's me. She's lost and wandering and her path is made of dreams and air and nothing, and built out of her spirit and herself. And it's all that is holding her up.

This is what true art is -- to touch someone you've never met, wrench out their guts, hold them up for the world to see, and show them themselves. She has held the mirror up to my face. And I am crying from what I see there... From its beauty and its tragedy.

I am in awe....

So they finally fixed register. But between the hacker and the subsequent fix, the module that dragonfare had to prevent spam signups died. She's been hit by 50 spam registrations in about 24 hours, when AL used to average about one in a month. So:

1. If you register and get removed, don't take it personally, it's probably accidental in the process of killing out the spam signups. None of them seem to be posting, just filling in bio info, like websites -- so if you register, post an intro ASAP so they know you're a real person.  And Nightfire and Kaibagirl, I warned her you guys were coming, along with possibly MythCWriter (just in case) so if she kills out registrations she hopefully won't kill yours.)

2. If you know either where dragonfare can get an easy to upload, simple-to-install anti bot module for phpBB (php forums) or if you can troubleshoot phpBB code (since everything listed on the website expects you to modify code and she is in over her head on that) I think she will be eternally grateful to you...  Any computer geniuses out there?

Spicy thinks she may regret this -- I know I'm going to...

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble/fanart (forget that, you get to request an icon...) of any pairing/character (well, the pairing if I can find one to use, otherwise just the character) of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level. If you absolutely can't write (or draw), I don't see why you wouldn't be able to offer drawings (or writing) or icons or something instead (which is why you're getting icons from me... I can't draw and I already owe two people fanfics, I'm not going to get any behinder than I am already).

1. Nightfire (aka cindy_73) wants Zane Truesdale from Yugioh GX. here here or here
2. spicy_diamond wants Sanji (go figure....) here plus a lagniappe: here here here here
3. kaibagirl007 wants Yugioh/Torchwood/Dr.Who characters to go with her fanfic.  Anyone got a Mokuba all grown up?  We need one...  here
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Tell me who, and what they are from -- I'm not actually familiar with that many things.....

Months ago the server for Animated Life got hacked, and it took down everything including the forums. Slowly things were put back together, including the forums, but the site has refused till recently to let people register. Finally it spit out an error code that let the administrator solve the problem, and as of tonight, register is working at the Animated Life Forums.

I know at least two people on my f-list who have tried to register in the last few weeks.  So, finally -- IT LIVES!!!!

(Animated Life is a forum for anyone who likes animation in any form -- anime, western, classic golden era -- the only two unbreakable rules are keep it PG and keep it polite.  And it is -- it's one of the nicer forums to hang out in because people don't insult your intelligence, or your taste even if it is different than their own.)

Okay -- kaibagirl007 is trying to breathe new life into a forum she and some friends have going. She sent me an invite to join KaibaLand and I figure I have enough Yugioh fans out there on my f-list, I should pimp it out for her...  I'm Dark Star there.