Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

A Gotham Holiday Moment from chronographia

Tom Smith sings his fannish re-working of "The Cat Went Fiddle-I-Fee", with running ASL interpretation by Judi Miller from pedanther. I laughed so hard I gave myself a headache. The laugh did more good than the headache did harm; it was a more than fair trade.
As Tom Smith himself said: "That was worth diamonds, man!"

The lai of Bisclavret's Wife from angevin2 (Rated T for violence; Marie de France Bisclavret). I'm actually re-gifting this one, as it's a Yuletide fic written for angevin2. This story gives a lot of (acurate) period detail (12th. C. Europe), and actually answers all the WTF?! questions the original left me with.

---

In other news, I really wish I had a digital camera, right now, so I could share the o_O scene out my window.

...

On the other hand, an ordinary camera would probably start flaily wildly in its little digital heart, trying to cope with the utter wierdness out there. A cyborg camera, linked directly to both my optic nerve and frontal cortex would probably work better; that way I could just look out the window, plug myself into my computer's usb port, and just upload what I'm seeing, directly.

I love you all, you know. I hope you know. Thank you so much for your friendship and patience.

Okay: I've been tinkering with my sticker design idea, and I've got two versions -- horizontal and vertical:

( images, with description for the visually impaired, behind this cut )

CafePress will print these up as vinyl stickers with waterproof ink and sell them to me for $5 each if I order one, or $2.40 each if I order ten. The latter sounds like a better deal, but only if I can find 9 other people who'd like one. So: Would you like one? And if you would, would you prefer a horizontal one, or a vertical one? (Whichever gets the most votes is the one I'll upload to CafePress).

The vertical one has the advantage of being more unusual, and therefore eye-catching, but the horizontal one has the advantage of being a better fit on a car bumper (though that may not matter or count if you want to stick it on your wheelchair)

The real, hard-copy card / pressie-thingie that I'm doing for the New Year, this year, is still not done. I started it in August. I hope it will be done soon. If you had asked to receive it, I will send it to you. If you haven't asked and would still like it, pm your mailing address.

In the meantime, I was recently inspired to make a virtual holiday card, and upload it to my LiveJournal Scrapbook. If you'd like it click here to open the envelope, then right-click to save it. It may not be hand-signed or have your name on it. But the sentiment is sincere.

A couple of weeks ago, I caught an episode from Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, and this one focused on Epicurus (the one whom "Epicurian delights") is named for. He's acquired a reputation through history of being a Hedonist, because he believed that if life was the means, pleasure and happiness was the end.

But really... his definition of "Happiness" was "calm contentment."

All we have to go on in life is what we feel through our senses, and that the Gods don't care if we're grateful to them or angry at them, so that if we want a pleasurable life, we have to create it for ourselves, in the here and now But part of seeking pleasure is to avoid trouble and pain and worry. So overindulging in that nine-layer chocolate cake with a cream-cheese rum frosting may give us a few minutes of intense pleasure, it will also give us hours of heartburn in the short term, and heart disease and illness in the long term. His favorite meal was: vegetables, whole-grain bread, a few olives, and water. Throw in some potted cheese, and you have a feast.

No, for him, happiness came from having three things:

Friendship (first, last, and always)
Freedom, and
Contemplation

As was pointed out in this episode, one of his maxims was never to eat alone: always think about who you will share your food with, before you give one second of thought about what that food will be.

Here's the middle part of the episode -- the bit where the lightbulb really clicked on for me:



That's where I realized that that's why I was happiest when I was in college and university, and why I'm not so happy now.

In America, by law (since the 1970s), if a college or university receives any money from the government for any of its services, the entire campus has to be barrier-free, more or less. So that while I was on campus, I had full Freedom.

Because my dorm rooms did not have a kitchen I could use, I had to go to a public area (cafeteria or the student union) for my meals. So, while I sometimes ate alone, I had company and companionship for most of my meals -- and the dodgy cafeteria food was more than compensated for by the three-hour conversations about life, the universe, and everything, and the laughter that went with that.

And the whole point of being there was contemplation and thought.

Now, I live in a neighborhood without (meaningful) accessible public transportation, and without even sidewalks, so I don't have anywhere safe to drive my wheelchair beyond the end of my driveway. So if I want to go anywhere, or do anything, I have to arrange it with my aide, first, and her schedule is locked into the schedules of her other clients. So that's Freedom crossed off the list.

And, because Freedom is crossed off the list, instead of eating most of my meals with companionship, I eat all of them alone. When Dad was alive, even though he was in New York, and I was here in Virginia, we at least kept more or less the same schedule, and I'd call him on the phone at right around dinnertime, so I at least have intellectual companionship, if not physical companionship, while I ate.

I still have time and the capacity for contemplation and self-analysis. And I have my friends (you guys -- I love you... you know that, right?), but there's a serious Space/Time-disconnect when our only interaction is through the Internet, and it doesn't feel like we're together.

Thinking through your troubles doesn't do you much good if you don't have the freedom to do anything about them, or friends to have at your back to help you, you know?

But yeah. I'm an Epicuran in the original sense of the word. Money can't buy me love. ...But if I had the money, I'd buy all my friends a videophone, and we could have a massive teleconference/party. Yeah!!