felis_ultharus

As some wise kitten once said, "I has an update". this one is about the Puritans.

I double-checked a fact for my site -- the one about legalization of homosexuality in Canada happening before Stonewall -- and I was astonished to see how close it was.

Bill C-150, better known as the Omnibus Bill, was given royal assent in the afternoon of June 27, 1969 -- the final rubber stamp before a bill becomes law. Late that night and early the next morning, the Stonewall Riots began, and with them the beginning of legalization of homosexuality in the US.

There must've been something in the air that day.

Other than that, I'm working full time this week, but anime night is still on for tomorrow. Mostly this week, though, I'm looking forward to the Pötterdamerung ^_^

Current Music: The Grey King

Another long one on my other site, this one a summary of homosexuality in England leading up to 1763 (when it took over Canada).

Saturday and Sunday were marvellous days. Saturday night was the drag show

montrealais organized, and it was fantastic.

Sunday afternoon, I went up to the provincial archives, housed in the palace of the second-to-last intendant of New France, Gilles Hocquart. It's one of the most astonishing buildings I've ever been in -- a Neo-classical-meets-Rococo exterior, an inside filled with sweeping staircases and polished wood floors.

The centre, though, was startling -- an enormous cut-out section with modern elevators, class walkways, electric glass doors, and giant allegorical stone statues of the seasons. Everything was spotless and gleaming white, and just for that added Gattaca feeling, all the archivists (not one of them over 30, contrary to stereotype) wore gleaming lab coats with pale blue scrubs.

I felt like I was in the home of Lex Luthor, or a James Bond villain, and that there missiles underneath the archives waiting to blow up the moon or something.

At the top of the mansion, a gorgeous 20-something boy retrieved the subpoenas from 1840 I'd been looking for for my research for my other site.

After that, I went to a marvellous meal with

em_fish to Kilo, and we had fun just hanging out and talking ^_^

Edit: I split my massive entry up -- it's getting too long, and releasing it in chunks will give me more time to research. It also means I can flesh out some parts more, that I deal with too lightly.

Edit 2: I edited the first chunk a little, and added a map stolen from Wikipedia -- it was public domain anyway ^_^

And in the "things we learn from Wikipedia" category, Camilla Parker-Bowles, wife of Prince Charles, is a direct descendent of one of William of Orange's male lovers, Arnald van Keppel.

It was a fairly quiet weekend -- just what I needed. It was fun hanging out with

em_fish,

melting_penguin, and

bananality.

I'm a little behind on my editing (only about 10% through what promises to be the most detailed and slowest of my edits).

Also, I made a second update to my queer history/politics site. This one is also history.

Social Life

'Twas a marvellous party yesterday -- I think my most successful in 10 years. Last year, the highlight was the treats

montrealais concocted, but greatly suffered from poor planning -- a two-day open-house ensured that no one arrived at the same time.

Things were pretty crowded last night, at least by the standards of entertaining here. I'm getting much better at dealing with crowds of people and loud noises -- I haven't had a panic attack in about a year -- so next year I might open it up not just to friends, but to friends-of-friends.

We'll see if we can fit that many people in this apartment, which is large but uses space strangely (the bedrooms are gargantuan, and the living room is tiny).

Thanks to everyone who came, and thank you for the gifts. I loved every gift I got, so maybe I'm not as hard to buy for as I thought I was.

Being inundated with manga is not a bad thing, the books were great (your friends really know you when you get the only two books by a favourite author you don't own, on the same night), and

montrealais's homemade project was both thoughtful and beautiful. Also, I want the recipe for

melting_penguin and

bananality's Easter-egg-chocolate-chunk cookies.

'Course, no one's going to see me much for the next month, thanks to

em_fish's and

rougemacabre's gift. If you don't ever see me again, it's your own fault :p

Current Location: in post-party mellowness
Current Music: One of the Boys -- must finish before I move to manga

Gah. Starting today, I'm working the next six days. I kept my birthday free, but that's about it. I'm going to be quite worn out by then.

Oh, well. Beltaine was fun, even if we didn't do much -- just got together and got caught up (none of us have seen

foi_nefaste in ages). But I guess that's what the holidays are for.

Still enjoying One of the Boys: Homosexual in the Military during World War II, though I'm reading it slowly. And I'm looking forward to Gankutsuou tonight -- the grand finale. I guess holding out for a happy ending is pretty pointless, though.

Current Music: One of the Boys

Social Life

So I'm tentatively saying the evening Tuesday, May 8th, for birthday, starting around 6 or 7. This is really the only time I can do it that week.

Anyone on my friends list is invited.

And as for my Pagan friends, are we doing anything for Beltaine...? It's Tuesday of this week.

Current Music: One of the Boys

I made it to work today! Hopped up on Tylenol, and with a voice like Harvey Fierstein, but alive!

And just a question about plans tomorrow -- specifically, for the anime group: when are we converging on Astro tomorrow? I'm free anytime after 1:30.

Current Location: at work
Current Music: Mabinogion

Just thought I'd stop in, mention that I'm back in Montreal, and wish everyone a Happy New Year.

'Tis been a fun couple of days.

montrealais had a trio of really nice houseguests here, and we hung out with them for New Year's. We were in Jacques Cartier Square for the beginning of 2007. Mostly, though, we spent a traditional jour de l'an, gathered 'round ye olde Internet watching the music videos of the days of yore (yore = 1980s, in this case).

This day has been very lazy, though I'm approaching 30,000 words of my novel rewrite, so that's something. Unlike during NaNoWriMo, I seem to be working at NaNoWriMo speed.

Current Music: finishing Cartesian Linguistics

A few things:

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it ^_^
I've been spending most of my time with Sean and Sam, which has been fun. Spent Yule with Sean, and Sam got me another set of Tarot cards ^_^
My mornings have been devoted to my novel. I'm going to fall short of 50,000 words in 12 days, but I'm now edging towards 11,000 words (since Tuesday) as of this morning. It's much more sophisticated than my previous version. I had to excise one of the supernatural elements, and devote myself to the development of the other. Tone and style have greatly improved, and I'm finding ways to get my point across without sounding preachy. I get my best work done on this coast, and so I want to do as much of it as possible here.
Bad books happen to good authors. I was enjoying Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors -- a collection of short stories -- but most of the stories in the second part of the book are cheap Lovecraft parodies that aren't even unintentionally funny. I think the retelling of Beowulf on the California coast will one day be remembered as the low point of Gaiman's career.
It's said that our skin cells are all shed and replaced every 27 days. The skin looks the same, but no one cell of it remains the same. I've been thinking of that as I walk Victoria's downtown core. I used to run into people I knew there every few steps. I've spent every afternoon downtown this week, and haven't met a single person I once knew. The city's the same and yet is a city of strangers. I suspect that everyone I knew has fled.
I spoke with a second gay clerk. So Victoria has two gay men. It's crawling to cosmopolitan-hood faster than a man with three broken limbs.

Current Location: the Tudor-style gingerbread house
Current Music: Smoke and Mirrors

There was a lovely windstorm last night. They were predicting 80 kmph winds, but I don't think it actually topped 60. Too early to tell yet if trees were uprooted, like they were last week.
It's been fun catching up with friends. I saw Sean Monday and Tuesday, and hopefully will see him again today. Sam -- for those of you keeping track of these people -- is married now. It's funny thinking that the kid you used to babysit for is married.
I spotted Victoria's Gay Guy -- this city only has one at any given time, and when he flees to greener pastures another appears to take his place. This one was a gorgoeus redheaded twentysomething working the counter at Zydeco, a novelty and kitsch shop.
Victoria has more novelty and kitsch shops per capita, I suspect, than any city on Earth. If you need a t-shirt boasting your sexual prowess, Jesus action figures, boxing nun puppets, or those crystal balls full of electricity, you have plenty options. Strangely, I have yet to find a store specializing in DVDs, which perhaps says something about the entertainment tastes of Victorians.
Tofu causes male homosexuality. You heard it here first. I suppose, conversely, nothing promotes male heterosexuality like filling your mouth with a nice, big slab of meat.

Current Location: the tudor gingerbread house
Current Music: A Harper's article on fundamentalist schools

So I made it safely to British Columbia. We actually arrived early. Just before our descent, we passed through a tunnel created by a thick, piled-up cloud. It was beautiful.

(It's selfish of me, but I like being part of a generation that gets to see the clouds from above. Given the amount of fossil fuels planes use, and that no one even seems to be talking alternative energies for planes, we might be one of the last generations that gets to ride through a tunnel of cloud.)

I was nearly narcoleptic at dinner with the extended family yesterday (having woken up at 1 am, BC time). I crashed, and woke up at 2 am. I've been poring over the edited versions of my novel, as annotated by

em_fish and

montrealais. I'm actually kind of sad that I yanked the novel back from

em_fish, because I'm actually enjoying her notes, and wish I had them for the rest of the novel.

I'm going to do a heavy rewrite, because of

montrealais's larger criticisms about the integration of supernatural and ordinary elements. I'm no Neil Gaiman or Robertson Davies when it comes to balancing out two worlds, but maybe I can get better at that juggling act. In any event, my Otherworld needs heavy work.

So I guess my time in BC will be NaNiWri2Weeks :)

Current Location: My parents' Tudor-style gingerbread house
Current Music: Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

"Go to www.PopCultureMadness.com and select the year you became 18. Snip the top 30 songs from the list and paste it in your journal. Bold the ones you liked; strike the ones you disliked; and italicize the ones you know but don't exactly like nor dislike. The ones you don't know will stay common text."

Conclusion: I wasn't even plugged into pop culture at an age when everyone is supposed to be plugged into pop culture. Most of this list is made up of things I hated or have never heard.

I only liked three songs on the list.

( Top 30 meme )

In other news,

rougemacabre and Sammy are wonderful, and the late-night surgery on

montrealais's computer has turned out to be a success ^_^

And what are people doing next Saturday (a week today)...? It'll be my last day off before I leave for BC.

Current Location: At my desk, on lunch
Current Music: Homosexualities of the English Stage

So I've mostly bounced back from Tuesday's news. Things are returning to quasi-normal.

In a crisis, I explode. Then I put the pieces back together very quickly. I've mentally reorganized the next half-year, and quietly gone back to writing and working, which seems to be my life.

I've gotten ten pages written on the not-novel, and thinking about how I'll revise novel #1 when the second copy returns my way.

Tonight, I'm happy. I read A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Shakespeare's most fun comedy. And the anime we're watching would probably make anyone feel better about their own life.

I got a lot of writing done. I'm feeling appreciated at work. And -- and this will only make sense to 7 people on my friends-list -- I've learned a trick to dodging lightning. Sadly, this trick requires me to have my eyes open, which is more than I can manage tonight, so I shall have to save it for tomorrow. I can't seem to get past 60 bolts in my sonambulant state.

There shall be no game this weekend because

montrealais will be at an NDP conference helping to hammer out the gay socialist agenda ^_^

If my erstwhile players are interested, I could go for another round of that game we played last time.

Current Location: Thunder Plains
Current Music: Criticism on A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Happy Samhain to those who celebrate it. Now the wheel of the Pagan New Year begins another turn.

I saw

terren_divided last Saturday for the first time in years, which was great. and last night, I spent Samhain dining out with

em_fish,

jenjoou,

maidenofirisa,

montrealais,

rougemacabre, and her husband.

Otherwise, it's been quiet. I've been writing. I spent the morningworking on an essay about how Twelfth Night is Shakespeare's "fuck you" to the Puritans (I didn't phrase it like that, naturally).

In other news, I'm still waiting for my results back for my Comprehensive Exams -- the last serious barrier to my Master's degree. They're being marked by a woman named Bina, whose classes I've been avoiding because she has the reputation of being the school Arch-Postmodernist. Her course descriptions sound like they were all cribbed from Foucault.

Apparently, she'd so late because she's writing a grant proposal. And here I thought she'd just decided marking essays was "bourgeois".

Current Location: Djose
Current Music: Endymion again

So last night was a lovely birthday party at

rougemacabre's, who was a marvellous hostess as always. The dinner was marvellous, and I had curry for the first time.

I'm gradually coming out of Internet detox, though it shall be some time before I can catch up on all my friends' pages. I've been moving slowly through, but I'm about two weeks behind for everyone.

I've been mostly procrastinating, but I am still ahead on my Shakespeare course, and I've been playing around with a fantasy short story that wants to grow into a fantasy novel. Trying not to get too far ahead of myself, since I still have another novel to revise once all the feedback comes in, but it's just too tempting to go ahead and write ^_^

Looking forward to seeing

terren_divided on Saturday, and to our first game in many an age on Sunday. I'll give advanced warning that there will be no game the week after, because I have to work the first weekend every month.

Current Location: Time divided between Macalania Woods and the 16th Century
Current Music: Endymion by John Lyly

Just a post to announce that I'm not dead.

I've been reading around the clock. I finally crashed this weekend. I only read about 20 poems yesterday, and a third of a novel today.

I calculate the absolute minimum I need not to crash and burn on this exam on Friday is reading 2.7 novels. I'm a slow reader and two of them are long novels, too -- long, but very good. I'd also like to get more poetry read.

I have had a bit of a social life.

jenjoou throws a great party, and anime nights have been fun. I'm enjoying Last Exile.

Better news is that I finally finished my heavy edit ofmy novel, and now I'm doing my final, lighter edit. I calculated this would take about 4 days, but it's going to be more like 20, given my reading schedule.

And on the subject of my writing, my public reading at Zeke's gallery is now online. It includes a few paragraphs from my novel. I'm proud and very embarrassed at the same time -- no one told me it'd be web-accessible :/

Current Location: The 19th and 20th Centuries
Current Music: Timothy Findley's The Wars

I have been asked to cross-post this:

Folks, this Sunday night we're going to have a big, generalized get-together at Kilo as a going away party for my dear friend and yours, Ros/foi_nefaste, who as you may know is now planning to move to Alberta in order to marry her stud muffin.

We'll probably be there around 7ish, and everyone's invited. An RSVP [to montrealais] would be nice, for when I attempt to make reservations.

So those of you who know

foi_nefaste, please be there.

On the topic things being done Sunday, I just wanted to tell my players that we do have a game -- a regular noontime thing. We'll probably play for awhile, and then head over to

foi_nefaste's party ^_^

Current Location: The Late 17th Century
Current Music: Paradise Lost

( A quick note to my D&D players )

Other than that, I've been speeding a long on the final culling of my novel. And I have reached -- oh joy! -- the 17th Century in my readings for my comprehensive exams.

I have just started Ben Jonson's Volpone. I read A Defence of Poesy earlier this week, and found it surprisingly un-boring.

(It's strange reading a book discussing English literature written before Shakespeare -- it's like reding a science-fiction story that subtly hints that it takes place in a parallel universe. Sidney laments that England has produced no great playwrights.)

I also read Marlowe's Dr. Faustus this week. I love Marlowe, but seriously -- Faustus sells his soul, and uses the power to do nothing more exciting than play practical jokes and put on shows for 24 years? What a lack of imagination!

Current Location: Early 17th Century -- the English Renaissance
Current Music: Volpone by Ben Jonson

We were teased by glimmerings of rain this morning. It's already the flesh-roasting period of summer.

I've been going into the local government-run clinic every day for a post-op bandage-changing.

My writing is going very, very, very well. Still don't want to jinx it, though. Now I know how J.K Rowling feels -- scared that if she says "it's getting close to done", she'll suddenly want to re-write it again.

Of course, she has hoards of screaming fans to answer to. Thank goodness I don't have that! And even if I were to finish a version to my satisfaction say, today or tomorrow, there'd still be loads and loads of editing.

Uh, yeah. No game this Sunday, as it shall be

melting_penguin's birthday. We have an anime night coming up on Friday, after 7. And

em_fish, you're hearby formally invited -- I checked and it's okay ^_^

Current Mood: broiled
Current Location: In a drought
Current Music: still Petrarch -- I'm writing, so who has time to read?

So, I got 60 pages edited before work this morning, which must be a record. I also finalized my chart of the plot's overall structure.

It's been a good few days. Talked to quite a few people this week, both online and on phone, that I hadn't spoken to in ages, which is always good :)

I really do feel like I'm on the mend emotionally.

Current Location: in front of montrealais's computer

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If I could drink, I'd have a hangover right about now

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So should auld acquaintance be forgot?

Just an update -- nothing to see here

But I hate tofu and never eat it...

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Update

Happy Samhain!

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Life in the Literary Trenches

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Waiting for the rain...

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September 2011

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