a++ would smuggle into space again

I swear to god everything in this post is true.

Last week, I went with a fannish friend to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Neither of us had ever been, though she'd been recommended to it by a friend and we'd both Googled it.


Fig. 1. Not pictured: the surrounding strip mall aesthetic, or the extreme difficulty involved in finding a museum the size of a normal, non-Angeleno house in the middle of Culver City.

( to call this experience 'surreal' is to discount the many and valid rational points made by surrealists )

e: edited for name protection!

Mostly this post is about what happened to the fritourys herbes from yesterday. I bet you thought I was kidding about the mayhem! Oh, children, it's like you don't even know me. I do want to leave a brief note that I am two away from finishing the Use It drabbles (and will not be accepting any further requests.) And I am kind of really ready for the next iteration of the concrit meme, seriously, this time I will not be too chicken to put my name down, because boy do I need it.

( the exciting adventures of iron chef emma )

Homigod I am ashamed. The early works of Emma, part one. WARNING, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE SIXTH GRADE WRITING FOLLOWS

Chapter 1

Terra woke, panting, from the dream. She remembered it so vividly -- her mother held her tightly. She imagined herself in her mother's arms, but immediately reminded herself that on the streets softness made you dead. Terra scowled. Her parents had died years ago. A dream wouldn't bring them back. But yet ... she thought ... It had seemed so real. The worst part was hearing her mother telling her to find the Prentamon Woods.

Even the thought of going in there gave her the chills. It was said to be a place of magic, dark, dank magic. But then, it was just a dream, a nice dream where Mother held her and gave her a strange stone ... Ouch! Something had stuck her in the side. She looked down at the leaf-shaped stone her mother had given her in the dream. Fear flooded over her -- it looked like she was going to go to the Prentamon Woods.

"Terra!" A chorus of voices aroused her from her gloomy thoughts.

It ends there. No indication of how I was going to end it. No wait -- oh so luckily, I remember. See this? This is a parody of bad children's shows, right? Mine had approximately the same four characters and wasn't meant to be funny. Oh my god.

This is why I never clean my room! This, right here!

I'm rereading If on a winter's night a traveler, merrily making my way to the end of the eleventh chapter. I reread the last line. I sigh; it's a good ending, even if it leaves you hanging, oddly, not quite complete, which fits so well with the rest of the book.

I turn to the back cover to try to adjust the spine, which is broken, and ... there's another page.

Just a few lines, but it's a chapter 12 that changes everything about the ending. And I'd never read it before.

To have an experience like that when reading any other book would be pretty wonderful. To do that while reading a metatextual book about the impossibility of finishing books--unbelievable.

Sleep well, y'all. I'm going to dream of libraries.

Ever head of an entroposcope? No? Good, 'cause if you had that would be an odd coincidence. And I'm having too many coincidences for comfort lately. :/

An entroposcope is this device that the author Jasper Fforde came up with. It's basically a mixture of lentils and beans in a jar. When odd coincidences happen, you shake the jar. If it seperates out into its components, the odds are we're having a "localized entropic field decreasement", also known as a pseudoscientific technobabble. He made the science up, of course, but right now I want one. Here's why:

I was fencing in a meet yesterday for the first time. I only won one of the three bouts that I fenced (which is better than I expected, by the way.) After my bouts were over I went over to the girl I beat to make small talk. She looked vaguely familiar, and asked me "Do I know you? 'Cause I think I do..."

It turned out that she was my best friend from first-second grade. I had last seen her on my tenth birthday, basically five years ago. At the time, she'd been blonde and feather-light. We were both firmly convinced that she could fly in third grade. I was her coach. You can imagine that this ended in many bruises.

Hell, the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if she flew in the window right now.