Ruminations

Sources:

Sir Terry Pratchett, by Dominic Lipinski, 2011: https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2011/6/11/1307803056873/Terry-Pratchett-assisted--007.jpg?width=700&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

Captain Jack Havock of Steampunk Empire, on the refreshing courtesy and gentility he's encountered in the steampunk subculture:

I believe that the PUNK part is reverse punk, because so much of today's society is ill mannered that we ARE the punks by rebelling that.

(The context, for interested parties: http://www.thesteampunkempire.com/forum/topics/why-arent-we-angry )

Journalfen, thanks to the kind intercession of pfeffermuse (1), has finally consented to allow me into the clubhouse, where I'll be going by the same nom de net; that account will be serving chiefly as a home base for forays into several metafandom communities.

(1) Pfeffer has also considerately compiled a number of HTML instructions into this handy tutorial--enabling me to progress beyond the old repertoire of USENET typographic conventions and thereby advancing my cyberhousebreaking. (The Goat has, for reasons best known to himself, seen fit to scatter them throughout  LiveJournal's FAQ in an exasperating scavenger hunt.)

...And I'd long since decided how I was going to observe the occasion.

I picked up a sushi box lunch--they're now available with spring roll wrappers in lieu of rice--and bunkered down at home for a back-to-back showing of Tsui Hark's Zu Warriors movies, luxuriating in the spectacle of epic wuxia fantasy done right.

Following that, I settled in to reread Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds, and immerse myself in the adventures of yet more people whom the Powers that Be at Paramount have decided are beneath their notice (as well as mine.)

(I intend--eventually--to catch The Lost Failbender, when the public library acquires it on DVD; I trust that I can count on the company of kosaginolegion, and perhaps Roaring Tiger and Squalling Dragon, for an evening of Nerfbending, MSTing, and playing "How many things can you see wrong with this picture?")

(My online time is frequently in short supply during the holiday season, so these acknowledgements are somewhat belated; however, January 6th seems an apropos day on which to honor both a scholar and an icon of Victorian genre fiction.)

ratmmjess  sets forth his lone New Year's resolution:

To always remember this:

It is not necessary to have been a tiger from the first and by nature in order to display tigerish qualities. Social conditions exist by which lambs may be converted into tigers. (1)

And Sherlock Holmes, courtesy of Tetradecimal on Journalfen, delivers an exquisite takedown of a particularly officious would-be Fandom Cop (2); a sample quote:

My dear Watson, there is no man so enamored of rules and regulations than he who has no authority to pronounce them.

(1)  http://ratmmjess.livejournal.com/221317.html

(2)  http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1235661.html

(A tip of the fluffy pink-plumed chapeau to  ataniell93 for the heads-up.)

Today is an occasion for bloggers to honor a founding mother of a technology that would offer all sorts of disenfranchised people rooms (and podiums) of their own...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

...and, by extension, women in technology in general. 

Whereupon I wave to  kosaginolegion , whose patient tutelage introduced me to what has become the dominant medium of the 21st century, who's taken a special interest in the Countess for a variety of  reasons eventually to be revealed, and who, no doubt, would like everyone within earshot to know that computer 3-D graphic technology is an artistic tool, dammit, not a freakin' Easy Button.