Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 65

A description that starts out true

Hanging on a wall in my father's house is a three-inch-deep wooden frame, about a foot tall by eight or so inches wide, divided into cubbies of different sizes. Many of them have 1970s Star Wars action figures in them: an R2-D2 that my brother buried in the garden and that decades later my mother unearthed; Luke in Episode Six white; Luke in Episode Seven snow gear. One cubby holds a blue plastic barrel, which, if you unscrew it, opens up to reveal a slightly smaller yellow barrel, which can...

correctness in language

I've been really impressed by an online Spanish program I've been working through via a local community college. It's called "Speed Spanish," and I get the impression it's been around for a while. I like it. I'm into Speed Spanish III now, and the creator of the program, Dan Mikels, has said some things that impressed me so much I've been sharing them all over the place (as missroserose can attest to). AND NOW I SHALL SHARE THEM HERE.

In any language, there are certain things that are extra di...

Final cover for The Inconvenient God

Here is the final cover for my novelette, The Inconvenient God, which Annorlunda Books is bringing out in October! In case you can't read the text blurb, it says,

What happens if you try to retire a god who is not ready to leave?

An official from the Ministry of Divinity arrives at a university to decommission a local god. She is expecting an easy decommissioning of a waning god of mischief but finds instead an active god not interested in retiring and university administrators who have not to...

wooly achoo

Between tags, which I confess I'm not that fond of, and beautiful murals (such as this new one by the street artist who goes by the name "guache_art"), there are the fancy, elaborate versions of tags that you can see--for instance, on train cars, like these ones parked in B-town.

Here is one labeled "wooly achoo"



I like the color and circles on this one:



( several more examples )

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Wednesday reading--singing to the trees

More Timor ca. 1960:

They also chant "songs of instruction" to the trees before they are hewn down, asking that they provide strong supports for the house and allow no harm to come to the family who will ultimately live within; and there are songs to encourage the Nautilus pompilius, to leave their sea bed and decorate the roofs of the most important houses with their shells.

That is a mighty fine tradition, and I wish we had it here. (I wonder if they still have it there.)

Here's a picture take...

Questions Too Like the Lightning raised for me, part 3

We've reached it: Yet Another Asakiyume Rant on the Trolley Problem. When I first committed to writing this, I was all fired up. I was sure I had a totally new and many-splendored rant that would *not* merely be a rehash of my past rants. Now that some time has passed, I ... think I was wrong.

Here's the slim thought that seemed new at the time: trying to find out which of two (or however many) awful options a person will take in a controlled simulation is asking the wrong questions. It's assu...

Wednesday reading

I'm reading through Eden to Paradise, by Margaret King. She was an anthropologist, and this book, published in 1963, describes her time in what was then Portuguese Timor. I'm excited to read it because there's not a whole lot that's easily available to me about Timorese lifeways prior to independence. But oh holy wow to the wowth, this woman is self-satisfied, self-congratulatory, and casually racist like you wouldn't believe. (Actually, you would probably believe it.) I kept on mentally thin...

Questions Too Like the Lightning raised for me, part two

Part one is here . The question for part two is Will a Powerful Enough Computer Result in Unerring Predictions?

Annnnnd ... The answer is NO. No, it's not possible to amass enough information to make unerring predictions. It's like the problem of Glinda's record book in the Oz series. Glinda's record book was supposed to list everything that ever happened anywhere in the world, the problem being that to capture every single thing, you'd need a book the size of the universe (that's not even goi...

"say" sound in three languages

This doesn't qualify as a poem; it's just playing with sound.


誰のせい？ [dare no sei/ whose fault]?

no sé [I don't know]

say what?

no dice nada [says nothing]

dime [tell me]

だめ [dame/ no way]

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talk-to-me powder

I generally like, or at least don't mind, people talking to me, but I *do* notice when it's out of the ordinary. Today, I have the distinct impression that I'd inadvertently sprinkled myself with talk-to-me powder.

First in the supermarket, a girl stocking the shelves, looked up as I approached and said, "Is it raining outside?" (It's not; it's a sunny day.)

"No," I told her, "It's still clear out."

"It's just... " she indicated a rumbling noise coming from overhead. "It sounds like thunder."

"...