The Death of Spike
Calm down, ladies. James Marsters is fine. I’m referring to Spike, the hot-shot Australian I.T. company that’s currently in liquidation. Apparently they’re selling off everything – and I mean everything! – via online auction. Schadenfreude AND a bargain! Get ’em while they’re hot! (Hmmm, a Power Mac G3 for $500 sounds pretty damn nice…)

The voting was helpful, but ultimately pointed out that the best way to do this is just to go through everybody’s recommendations in turn. As some of us have to specially order the books, I figure the sooner we set the list the better. Therefore I’m just gonna call it. We’ll be starting with Anne Tyler’s “Back When We Were Grownups” for August and then moving on to Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones” for September. After that we’ll go through the rest of the list, probably just in order. I think we should shoot for, say, the 25th of each month to start our discussion. Then we won’t have too much book overlap. I’m going to be working on a new section of the site for us where you’ll be able to see the whole list, read the past discussions, and possibly even get additional links and information about the books. So stay tuned for that! But for now, get cracking on the Anne Tyler!

(Also, it’s perfectly cool if you have to skip a month or you don’t want to read a particular book. This is just a social group and we’re not gonna kick you out or anything. It would be awesome though if people would try stuff they wouldn’t normally read. Even if you hate it, at least that’ll make for a more interesting discussion!)

Friday Five:

1. How long have you had a weblog?
Some of you might be surprised to learn that although I started web-goddess in January 2001, I’ve actually had a weblog since September 2000. It was for an earlier incarnation of the Purple Weasels site and it mainly focused on Notre Dame news. I was inspired by this question to log into Blogger and see if any of those old posts still exist. Amazingly, they’re still there! I’ve scraped ’em out and I’m hoping to bring them back online soon. Like I said, it’s mostly college news, but there are some gems in there too.

2. What was your first post about?
Well, everyone’s very first post is always the equivalent of “Testing 1…2…3”, right? Disregarding those, my first real post on the PW site was this article about the then-upcoming Notre Dame vs. Nebraska football game. My first web-goddess posts (which you can read for yourself) were an announcement about my Roald Dahl site and a rant about British retail culture.

3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than one?
Well, doing the PW blog for a few months made me eager to launch one of my own. Once web-goddess had started, though, I didn’t have much blogging energy left over. The PW blog (and site) eventually petered out. Other than that, the only major change has been the switch from “.co.uk” to “.org”. The former still works, but I think the latter is easier to remember.

4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else?
I started off using Blogger but quickly got pissed off with server outages and mysteriously disappearing archives. So I wrote my own, called GoddessBlog. It’s been a learning process, and I’ve done a lot of tinkering over the past year. You can download the source code yourself here. There are even a couple
other sites running it! It’s not the greatest thing ever, but it gets the job done and it feels pretty good to run your own system.

5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who have all of their writing in one central place?
I’ve tried to get into journals before, but I always lose interest. It’s like when you meet someone in person, you know? You can only talk about yourself for so long. I don’t mind if people throw in some journal-type entries, as long as they also entertain me with posts about Buffy or politics or dance music. Once I get to know someone through their site, I’m more willing (and, indeed, eager) to read about their latest vacation or rants about their job. But you can’t launch straight into that stuff, because when it’s a stranger, it’s boring. So I guess what I mean is, I’m not really interested in reading the journals of random netizens, but I am interested in reading the journals of my friends.

(Sidenote: That last question brings to my mind my greatest site anxiety, that y’all are getting sick of hearing about me – and especially the Snook – and would rather I just stick to the links and quizzes. I mean, looking back through my archives I can see the the percentage of biographical-type entries has been on the increase. But then I get indignant and think, “Screw that. There are a million identical weblogs and the only thing that makes mine stand out is ME. So why should I change that?” Which is comforting… for a while.)

The minor slashdotting I’m receiving has demonstrated some flaws in my backlink system. I’m modifying it now so you may notice some weirdness. Once I get it ironed out, I’ll post an update for the GoddessBlog version.

Okay, it’s time to pick our first book! I’ve gone through the previous comments and made a list of all the books people seriously recommended. (Let me know if I missed any.) I’ve included a link to their respective Amazon pages as well as a small descriptive blurb. To vote, just leave a comment with your choice. Just pick one; we’ll get to the others eventually. (I know it’s hard. I want to read all of them now!) You can even post anonymously if you want. At the end of the weekend we’ll tally up and get started! Read on for the list…“Back When We Were Grownups” by Anne Tyler
The first sentence of Anne Tyler’s 15th novel sounds like something out of a fairy tale: “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” Alas, this discovery has less to do with magic than with a late-middle-age crisis, which is visited upon Rebecca Davitch in the opening pages of Back When We Were Grownups. At 53, this perpetually agreeable widow is “wide and soft and dimpled, with two short wings of dry, fair hair flaring almost horizontally from a center part.” Given her role as the matriarch of a large family–and the proprietress of a party-and-catering concern, the Open Arms–Rebecca is both personally and professionally inclined toward jollity. But at an engagement bash for one of her multiple stepdaughters, she finds herself questioning everything about her life: “How on earth did I get like this? How? How did I ever become this person who’s not really me?”

“Coraline” by Neil Gaiman
In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks to the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.

“Great Apes” by Will Self
Like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Great Apes is a strange and twisted tale, a surreal satire on the human condition, and an omen for those who wander too far. After a long night of partying, Simon Dykes, a successful British painter, wakes up to find that his girlfriend has turned into a chimpanzee. In fact, the world Simon once knew has become a planet of apes. Convinced he is still human, Simon is confined to the emergency ward of a hospital and put under the care of Dr. Zack Busner, clinical psychologist, radical psychoanalyst, maverick drug researcher and media personality. Written with the glittering satiric edge that is Self’s hallmark, Great Apes is a hilarious, disturbing, and truly unforgettable novel.

“Kushiel’s Dart” by Jacquieline Carey
When Mary Magdalene wept over the dying Christ, her tears mixed with blood in the earth beneath him. From that soil the great earth mother formed Blessed Elua, the most beloved of angels, and from him and his band of eight angels descended the beautiful D’Angelines. Phedre, a D’Angeline, is trained in the exotic Night Court to be a courtesan of the highest order. As she learns before she is 10, she is marked by the angel Kushiel, one of Elua’s eight, whose path to ecstasy is one of pain and submission. Phedre leaves the Night Court to serve Anafiel Delauney. She becomes devoted to him, and he treats her like a favorite daughter, teaching her diplomacy, strategy, and the ability to recognize deeply layered patterns of intrigue. Because her beauty and sexual skills make her a coveted prize, her capabilities for observing and listening make her privy to some of the deadliest secrets whispered in her highborn clients’ bedrooms. Thus she lives out her destiny as Kushiel’s dart.

“The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold
On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (“like the fish”) is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer–the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold’s haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where “life is a perpetual yesterday” and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie’s resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her “simplest dreams,” where “there were no teachers…. We never had to go inside except for art class…. The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue.”

“Moon Palace” by Paul Auster
Against the mythical dreamscape of America, Auster brilliantly weaves the bizarre narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg, an orphan searching for love, his father, and the key to the riddle of his origin and fate.

“The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant
The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider’s look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob’s daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah–all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery.

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O’Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.

Forgive me, Dr. Atkins, for I have sinned. Did I mention that I fell off the low-carb wagon in a big way last night? I had a G&T (no diet tonic available), two pints of sweet, sweet beer, and a big vanilla milkshake. (Though the milkshake isn’t as bad as you’re thinking, since here they’re mostly milk and not really any ice cream.) But still. I know. The amazing thing is that according to my testing strips, I’m still in ketosis. So either that’s residual ketones still in my system, or I luckily managed *not* to exceed my as-yet-undetermined daily carb level. And it might’ve helped that I went to the gym yesterday and worked my ass off. But I promise to be a good girl from now on… Well, at least until Tuesday, when I take the Snook out for his birthday to a big, surprise, fancy-pants restaurant!

Slashdot Meetup – This was excellent. The Snook and I showed up about ten minutes early, not knowing what to expect. It was at the Lord Nelson Brewery in the Rocks, which can get pretty busy with the after-work crowd. We found a little table and started looking for likely nerds, but we weren’t having much luck. Then, as the Snook went for another round of drinks, I saw a guy reading sci-fi nearby who was approached by another geeky looking type. They both said something, looked relieved, and shook hands. I took the opportunity to run over and confirm that, yes, they were Slashdotters. The Snook and I joined them, and soon our merry little group was discovered by one of the evening’s “hosts”, who had procured a big table. Pretty soon there were about eight of us crammed in. (As expected, I was the only girl.) Anyway, the talk was definitely less nerdy than expected. We talked about all the poisonous animals in Australia (my topic), the job market, home networks, digital cameras, hacking, etc. (Okay, so it was pretty nerdy.) Later we discovered another smaller enclave of people on the other side of the bar, including another girl! After a few hours and several beers, most of us headed off to The Rocks Cafe for some chow. It really was a lot of fun, especially for me, since I don’t know that many people here (much less ones that I can discuss PHP with). We’ve even made plans to meet up with some of them again soon!

I figured as the girl, I’d be the only one to remember to bring a camera. I was right. Anyway, here are some pictures of us:

Gael linked to this fabulous archive of pages from a 1970’s playground equipment catalog. It’s not generally the type of link I go nuts over, but I checked it out anyway. And how cool is this? I’ve played on, like, all this stuff. I’m having some serious nostalgia here. My elementary school had the Mountain Climber, and I seriously think it’s the first thing I ran to on the first day of kindergarten. I loved that thing. I’d play house in it. And the playground near my Grandma’s house was even cooler. It had several of the Saddle Mates. I’m positive I’ve ridden the ram, the donkey, and the duck. It had a Buck-A-Bout and several Rainbow Climbers too. I also remember making it to the top of a Bell Buoy. (We cheated and used our bare feet to kinda “walk” up the second pole.) Playgrounds were so fun back then.

The interview went really well! Thanks for all the supportive messages, and apologies for my random stress postings. As Hello Kitty points out, I “easily feel stressful”. Luckily she has advice too: “Only with a little bit of additional work plus controlling your temper, you would then lose energy. Not only you would accumulate your stress, you are weak to release it. For this type exercise and Karaoke will be the best way.” Huh. I don’t know about karaoke, but I am going to the Sydney Slashdot Meetup tonight. What better way to unwind than sharing some much needed alcohol with several fellow nerds? 🙂

Now that I’ve got my CompactFlash card reader working, getting pictures off my digital camera is a million times easier. That makes me want to take a million more pictures. Tonight I was somehow compelled to snap the front of our refrigerator. I think you can tell a lot about a person by their fridge. (The coolest one I ever saw was my friend Kel’s, which was completely papered in beer bottle labels.) Going clockwise from the upper-left, on ours is: a calendar/menu from Trisha’s, a local Indian restaurant; a “Smile!” sticker from the Newtown Hari Krishnas, over which I have added a note reading “TAKE BUGS SNOOKUMS!” to remind him to take his probiotics; a Notre Dame postcard my Grandma sent me; a Kenner Star Wars Ewok Village postcard Max sent me; a postcard from the Bad Ass Café in Dublin, Ireland; the aerobics timetable for my gym (it’s there for the guilt factor, more than anything); a Star Wars: Attack of the Clones postcard; a Guinness magnet; a Big Ben magnet (a going away present from our London housemates); a postcard of an orangutan mother and baby that I got at London’s Natural History Museum; and a “SODOMITE” postcard that I picked up free at my gym (it’s a parody of the “Vegemite” label). Now wasn’t that interesting? What’s on your fridge?

(Yeah, I’m just blathering and navel-gazing. But it’s ten hours before my interview and I’m a little nervous.)