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i will never buy anything at circuit city ever again[1] after how annoying that ad has been.

[1] unless it's a discount of over 20%, i'm not stupid just annoyed.

Yesterday was the lullaby moon finale. I was somewhat late for it, but it ended as you might expect with the return of the egg and the dreamlanders sailing off into the sunset with the couple.

It's been an interesting several months of performances. I'm very grateful to Lucia Neare and her company of players for setting up this incredible play for us, and I also learned a lot from how the plotting engaged our civic places.

It's a wonderful thing, dreaming. It's great when someone gets to share a dream or a fairy tale with a city on such an epic scale. It's been a wonderful 12 months of storytelling and art.

I think the performance style really touched me, the way that the meaning was only slowly unveiled enabled us to interact with the characters in our own way and build meaning. I still remember the cat that winked at me in Seward park when she went by on her bicycle and the happy rabbit and Lucia smiling that stand out in the performances. It's memories like this that make spaces sacred and lose their everyday trappings and take on personal meaning.

Happy new moon.

I've been reading a lot of free kindle ebooks over the last month or so as I have insomnia problems. here are the ones I've been reading in approximately reverse order, the links are mostly to the non-ebook versions because of amazon's link tool being hideously broken for kindle stuff. I tend to read lighter stuff when I can't sleep, more involved books make it unlikely I'll sleep at all:

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1). The Dresden Files are a great detective series, much better than the related television series. I recommend them over all the rest of the supernatural thrillers that have come out in the recent wave. (re-read)

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2). Continuation of the Dresden Files series. Much better than the first book. Holds true to a few fairly predictable detective story tropes concerning information, though, which would render the story predictable if you've read Hammett etc.

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, Book 3). This book is a great detective story. Lots of fun.

(several pratchett books i won't enumerate.)

The Demon Awakens (Demonwars). Someone said that RA Salvatore's books outside of the D&D realm are better. I gave two books of this 7 book series a try and I have to agree that they're better, still not 'good' though.

Queen of the Orcs: King's Property. This is allegedly a feminist take on fantasy tales, but mostly glorifies unthinking violence with a romance subplot. I don't recommend reading this book, as its heavy handed attempts to make points mostly fall flat.

Blood Engines (Marla Mason, Book 1). About a quarter of this book is really bad, a traipsing through the stereotypes of urban fantasy. The other three quarters are great. I really recommend this book over a lot of the rest of the similar books I've read this year. A quarter of the book's content read like an editor told the author 'you have to put this in for the book to sell,' the rest of it was great and impassioned prose.

The Briar King (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 1). A great fantasy series. There are some slight problems with the kindle/iphone conversion that makes it slightly confusing to read at four points in the story -- I reported that to amazon, I don't know if it will get fixed.

Perdido Street Station. (reread.) I just don't get why this book is supposed to be great. Sorry. I gave it another chance, and it just leaves me cold.

Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1) This is a decent political fantasy story. worth reading for free on the kindle. the later books in this series are allegedly better, I think this book suffered a bit from the world building.

So, I figured I'd do one of those screened questions things, where people can ask screened questions and get answers. Apparently, this is supposed to be a way to get to know people better or something.

So, ask away. I won't answer questions that are someone else's business, though.

Feel free to put this in your own journal.

Picture of Grooviks Cube and the moon together by Aaron Seemer. This is my favorite distance shot of the cube.

This picture also makes me think of Joel Veitch's Moon Song.

SF Gate (aka SF Chronicle)

gizmodo

Tech Republic

Reno Gazette-Journal

More forthcoming, we don't appear to be in any of the obvious articles in the times.

A thought for today, the fire sermon...

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying in Gaya, at Gaya Head, with 1,000 monks. There he addressed the monks:

"Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye -- experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain -- that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.

( Translated by Bhikkhu Thanissaro )

That is what the Blessed One said. Gratified, the monks delighted at his words. And while this explanation was being given, the hearts of the 1,000 monks, through no clinging (not being sustained), were fully released from fermentation/effluents.

the fire sermon, a thought for today.

This has been a fun couple of days. Started off going to the Capitol Hill Artwalk, it was a huge amount of fun aside from the torrential downpour. Somehow I managed to miss sculptruth and Bowentron, whom I assume are at every artwalk.

Friday I went over to help rimrunner with her new tattoo and went to the re-opened ROSTICERIA, which is the best mexican restaurant in the history of space-time. I also actually sat down and watched two episodes of deadwood, conveniently there was whiskey and swearing.

Saturday I worked for part of the day and then went out to the NW Ranger silkscreening party at CC Sallie's place. Thereby, I avoided hempfest. I very much agree with Dominic Holden's assessment of hempfest, which is that the hippie crap takes away from the useful mission of hempfest. I am indifferent to other people's pot use, aside from the general thought that the last thing that most people need is something to make them act stupider, but industrial hemp is important.

Yesterday was largely dominated by cube building, although I read about 600 pages of various books as I was familiarizing myself with various legal issues before a new project that theoretically started today.

Today was supposed to be a busy work day, but turned out not to be. I think the only thing I'm going to accomplish today is going to a social get together and buying a friend a birthday present.