Again with the devices.

MIT student arrested for wearing art that lights up from a 9-volt battery.

Truly appalling is this, by Major Scott Pare of the Massachusetts State Police:

“Thankfully because she followed our instructions, she ended up in our cell instead of a morgue.”

Beg pardon? Because she followed your instructions she didn’t end up dead for wearing a shirt with lights on it? Thank you, officer. That’s awful kind of you.

[Edit: Oh, it’s worse than that apparently. Nick points to the AP release, which has Pare saying this:

Simpson was “extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used,” Pare said. “She’s lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue.”

Lucky! She should thank her lucky stars.]

Boston has learned nothing from the LED-art scare of a few months past – that one, by the way, ended anti-climactically, with the press forgetting all about it, and the two young men in question doing community service in return for having bogus charges against them dropped.

I hate scare-mongering. And I’m inexplicably terrified of what happens if my husband ever wears a particular present I gave him in the wrong place. (Going back to the Star Simpson incident, the argument that she should’ve known better, wearing something like this to an airport, holds no water. She should not be held responsible for the overreaction of others: first let’s talk about how much damage any device powered by nine volts is capable of making.)

Hat-tip to Dr. Memory.

Bread.

What’s your favorite recipe for bread, made using hands and an oven but no bread machine, and easy for a bread beginner, and not so time-consuming that it’ll discourage me from baking bread in the future? Not sourdough: I don’t have starter, and don’t like sourdough enough to seek it out.

LiveJournal readers, please to comment using the URL up top and not directly on LJ; I won’t see the latter.

Cheesemas, and directional

Today was cheesemas. Cheeses were bought and brought – drunken goat, mozzarella, robiola, explorateur (?! - hokey name, but most excellent cheese), some other alcohol- (port-)laced semisoft cheese, Valdeon (a Spanish blue), raclette and half a dozen others. Someone even brought raclette ice cream which, really, was much milder than it had any right to be. Add to that fruit, bread, fig-and-vidalia jam, wine, beer, sprakly non-alc cider, fifteen folk or more and two mostly happy and social toddlers, and it’s cheesemas in the neighborhood. My undying gratitude and love to my cheesemas-elf conspirator.

Unrelatedly, I thought some this evening, and wrote down the following:

north is triangular, steady, monument-al

east is rounded, exotic, otherworldly

south is light, scintillating, hot

west is radio, diagonal, big

the center is small, sensitive, reactive

Purple Blurb

This coming Tuesday, September 18th, come to MIT for the first in the Purple Blurb digital reading series. “The readings will start at 6pm at MIT in 14N–233 (second floor of building 14, in the wing that is across the courtyard from the Hayden Library),” says organizer Nick Montfort in the announcement.

The first reader will be Robert Kendall, and I’m very sorry to miss it due to a prior obligation: Rob’s words tend to transport me somewhere familiar I’ve never been before. At the next event on October 18th, I’ll be reading from Roland^HT and talking a bit about narrative threads running through it. The other two readings this semester will take place on November 13th (Barbara Barry) and December 4th (Andrew Plotkin).

For a good time, call on Purple Blurb.

You tell me.

What should I write about next?

Turnabout.

Once again I keep getting these flashes of “should really blog that!” and then immediately “but there’s so much unsaid over there.” So, in short:

I defended and graduated.* To paraphrase my landlady, I’m Vika Zafrin, Ph.uckin’ D. That paraphrase involved changing fewer letters than you might imagine. For the first time in my adult life I am not a student pursuing a degree full-time at an institution. Mostly there’s a giant feeling of relief, but I already miss research. Although that balances out, because I sure don’t miss the constant insecurity, the “not good enough”ness, the 24/7 feeling like I have to be working.

OK, I still mostly feel like I should be working. But it’s getting easier to compartmentalize, and you know what? There’s a whole big life out there, with books and spiritual practice and cooking and friends and friends’ children and visits with mom, who lives in driving distance for the first time in thirteen years. Who knew?

Ethan and I have moved up to Boston. Best move we could’ve made. Wanderlust is tugging at my pants leg already, but I could be happy living in Boston for a long while. Given that wanderlust is my muse and near-constant companion, that’s a hefty statement to make.

The house we live in has seven human residents, five cats, a dog and (temporarily) a bird. Gods bless the marvel that is modern allergy medicine. Our two cats have established relationships with the three who have lived here for long. Nochka the tiny black cat has a hissy fit any time DJ Spooky, the black boycat thrice her size, comes into our bedroom seeking food. And there’s the impossibly beautiful lynx-y Winter, who is afraid of almost everyone. Other than that, feline people are chill. Humans are also mostly chill, and really, how bad can it get when you live with geeks and musicians (and a funny man who inexplicably deals with insurance all day)? A circus band occasionally practices in my living room. Beat that with a stick.

The past three months have been spent largely acclimating to the new house, the new life rhythms, the big questions like where to go from here and how to plan out the long term. I’m working outside of academe now, but who knows how long I’ll be able to stay away?

So much is changing. Mostly I like it. Some of it is hard growth, but on the whole I feel like I’m stretching after a long sleep.

*Oh, and my work? Here, in its entirety. Get yourself Firefox and enjoy. It’ll take half a minute or so to load, but is thereafter very fast.