Anagrammage

After reading John Green's fabulous An Abundance of Katherines, I started thinking about anagrams.

Wordsmith's anagram generator states: All the life's wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie.

So what do you get when you anagram my name? I thought about it. Maybe something involving ink or skill or owls. Or will or win or lions (or loins).

So I typed in my name, and was confronted with a big long list of gibberish. Some of the strings included the above words, but none that really made any sense. Oh, and there was this one:

kill oil sin win

sounds like the US government's foreign policy, ne?

But what does it say about me???

My favourite things about regional Victoria (week two of tour)

1. the Eaglehawk cinema. One aged town hall; one screen; twenty sofas; glass of wine; Tristram Shandy. Highly recommended.
2. vanilla slices in Ouyen
3. watching actor Robin literally climb the walls of Gilmore College
4. seeing a wedge-tailed eagle eating a dead kangaroo
5. having reason to say Boort and Manangatang over and over again.

(and not-so-favourite things about regional Victoria)
1. unheated school gyms at 8am
2. the prison-issue furniture and Unpleasent Smell at the Oyuen motel
3. realising in Murrayville that I could be at my grandma's house in Adelaide for lunch, but I wasn't getting back to Melbourne until after dinner.

My favourite things about regional Victoria (week one of tour)

1. hedgehogs from country bakeries.
2. the secondhand bookshop in Benalla
3. Elizabeth Honey, the Best Car Passenger Ever
4. honeyjoys made by Glenrowan Primary School for Elizabeth Honey
5. actually having a good reason to say Yackandandah, Puckapunyal and Wang.

Best bookshop ever.

I want to live here. Always.

(it's a bookshop in China, btw. via boingboing)

somewhat incoherent ramblings on fandom

I've been thinking a lot about fandom, fanaticism and arrogant snobbery.

It started on the weekend when I went to Continuum, a speculative fiction convention here in Melbourne. I was speaking on two panels, one about YA fiction with Margo Lanagan, Lucy Sussex and a couple of other experts, and one about Harry Potter with Shaun Tan and some Young People. And I hung around and went to some other panels and talked to some people.

And the people are all lovely. Okay, some of them are a bit strange, but on the whole, that whole stereotype about the locking-yourself-in-the-basement-with-elf-ears-playing-computer-games is just bollocks.

I went to a panel on Doctor Who. Because it is good and I am totally in love with this man. And as I listened to the panellists talking about Doctor Who fans, and what the fans think of the new Doctor, I slowly started to realise something.

And the something was this: I didn't really care. I love Doctor Who. I also love lots of other so-called-geeky things like Red Dwarf and Blackadder and good fantasy books. But I don't belong in the world of fandom, because I don't care that much. I don't care if something is 'canon'. I don't care if 'kissing is just not Doctor Who'. I just care if it's good, and if it's entertaining. (and if David Tennant is wearing his glasses)

And this feeling of not-belonging made me a bit sad, and quite guilty. Maybe I was just being judgemental? Maybe I am secretly one of those people who sneer at science fiction fans. I always thought I was one of the fans, but I'm just not.

And then last night I went to see a documentary called Darkon, about Live Action Role Playing. It was an entertaining documentary. There were lots of funny bits. But there were also lots of really tragic bits. Like the bit where the school-age boy said that his in-game relationship with a gypsy (not a Relationship, just a relationship) was the first real relationship he's had with a human being that's not his parents. That is sad, and not in the jeering, pointing sense of the word that the rest of the audience clearly saw it as.

I think it's amazing that people can devote so much time and effort and creativity into an imaginary pursuit. It's like the game-playing I used to do as a kid (it's not all that unlike writing novels, really, except the LARPers actually put on clothes and leave the house). It is a Good Thing. More people should play and use their imaginations.

I wanted to kill most of the audience.

They were just a bunch of sniggering, finger-pointing snobs. You think it's funny that these people dress up as knights and fight each other in their spare time. What do you do in your spare time? You watch movies about people who dress up as knights and fight each other! And if you lived in a shitty American suburb and had a shitty job where you were never going to earn enough to be able to get out and do something, then wouldn't you want to do something amazing? And if that amazing thing is just imaginary, then who cares? Imaginary is good.

So all I can conclude (I said it would be incoherent) is that I may not fit in to the world of fandom, but I also don't fit in to the so-called-normal world either.

Maybe I'm like the fat kid from Darkon. Maybe I don't fit in anywhere. That's fine, cause I know a whole bunch of other people who don't fit in anywhere either. So I'm in good company.

sucks to be me

sucks to be you...

...sucks to be us, but not when we're together...

A defense of the word sucks.

bookses

There is not enough time in the day. I would very much like to crawl under my desk and fall asleep. That’s my excuse for this meme, instead of a proper post.

(oh and because READING GETS YOU LAID)

1. One book that changed your life?
   Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. (I know, that’s three books. Whatever)

2. One book you have read more than once?
   Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. I try and read it once a year.
   

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt (entirely unrelated to the evil Tom Cruise movie). Or Winnie the Pooh.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Doing It, by Melvin Burgess

5. One book that made you cry?
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. Heaven Eyes by David Almond.

6. One book you wish had been written?
The last book in the Obernewtyn series by Isobelle Carmody.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?
Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies.

8. One book you are currently reading?
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. Preperation before I see the musical in London. I am never going to be able to watch The Wizard of Oz again. Glinda is a MOLE.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
*looks timidly at menacingly high pile of unread books*
*winces*
Erm. I don't want to pick one, in case the others get angry.

10. Now I’m supposed to tag five people, but as I’m tired, you can bloody well tag yourselves…