Hobbies and Quality

This post upholds that you don't have to be good at a hobby to enjoy it.   

This is true if you enjoy doing the hobby for its own sake by yourself and/or the results are still usable.  Many people and hobbies fall into that category.  Our Imbolc candles got the colors a bit scrambled but they still turned out very pretty. 

The premise is also true if you value your hobby for something other than its appearance or other technical finesse.  My yard may look more like a jungle than a Midwest Living cover, but well, that's because I modeled it after a jungle and not a magazine ... and my detritus food chain is 3 days to apex which is a thing I am proud of.  The toads aren't grading me on how it looks.

However, the premise may not be true if you're trying to make something look like the picture on the box, and failing that goal makes you sad instead of happy.  It definitely is not true if what you want is a craft community but when you go to a quilting circle the other people pick on you.  :/

There are many reasons to take up a hobby.  One is because you enjoy it.  Another is you like doing it with friends.  Perhaps you want the finished product.  Maybe you need a way to practice your manual dexterity that is not boring-ass therapy exercises.  Some folks do it to preserve their culture.  All of these are equally valid; do what works for you.

Leave us not forget the historic value of things that were, in their time, thought mediocre or inferior.  Sometimes people don't recognize greatness for a few decades.  Other times, those everyman examples are all we have left.  All art has value, some is just more practiced or popular than others.  So don't be ashamed of what you do, or what you like.

Culture, Tools, and Interpretations

This article talks about the impact of one's culture and its tools of thought on the interpretation of creative works. 

What I have to say about this is ...

*dumps whole trunk of stuff*

Look, I have Celtic threes!  Lakota fours!  Sumerian fourteens!  Chinese elements, Greek elements, that faerie set I got from some friends.  Cherokee color symbolism, Japanese, European.  Myths!  Legends!  Heroes out the wazoo!  Don't drop the Aarne-Thompson Index on your foot, that fucker's heavy.

Analyzing entertainment is so much more fun when you have ALL THE TOOLS.  There is no such thing as too many tools!  You can have fun explaining the same show six different ways.  \o/

If all you have is a hammer, then every story looks like a nail, which is ... really fucking dull, why would anyone keep watching.  Oh wait, maybe that's why some people don't read books.  0_o

I'll just be over here enjoying my toybox of cultural everything.

Wagara Kimono Hijabs

While the rest of the world is going apeshit trying to ban hijab, Japan has introduced wagara kimono hijabs for the pleasure of their Muslim folks.   Not just plain hijabs that work with kimonos, but actual wagara -- Japanese aesthetics like sakura blossoms for springtime, so they actually match in ways that look nice and feel Japanese.  Fusion at its best.  <3 Japan.  

Nonviolent Communication

Evidently there's a terrible-sounding book on this topic, and someone decided to rant about that, with a very bad habit of equating nonviolent communication (the concept) with Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg (the book).

( Read more... )

Killing Time

Described as "the gayest Star Trek novel."  

Yep.  Got it.  :D

The Microseasons of Japan

Beautiful just to read, but incredibly useful if you write Japanese poetry such as haiku. 

Better Living Through Chemistry

Well, sort of.  Ketamine works for treating resistant depression in some people, but both the side effects and the stigma cause significant problems.

This really makes me want to get into Terramagne and write about a character with depression and horse traits.  Because ketamine's main use is, in fact, for large animals.  It's safer for them than a lot of other drugs -- particularly for skittish prey animals who are otherwise prone to spook and bash themselves into walls or trample nearby humans.  So it stands to reason that while antidepressants might work much less well on equine-human persons, ketamine might work quite a lot better.  That doesn't necessarily mean it has no side effects, but it's probably a reliable way of damping down the depression.  One of many ways in which soups, especially primal soups, can have very different reactions to stuff than ordinary humans do.  And yet, truth told, it works well enough for humans that some stick with it like glue -- especially people for whom the usual stuff does not work.  So then, an equine primal, and their human friends who also use ketamine, and their support group, because T-America doesn't bury this stuff under the rug near as much as here.

Or we could always go with Moon Door instead.  You know some of the Women's Chronic Pain Support Group must have tried it, some of them are try-anything types.  My money's on Soma.  

New Crowdfunding Project: "Asexual Fairy Tales"

Now funding on Kickstarter: an anthology of asexual fairy tales with illustrations.  :D 3q3q3q!!! 

I definitely want the hardcopy.  I am considering whether I want to bump up to the next level and also get two signed prints of the artwork.

If you want there to be more acefic in the world, go check out this project.  Fairytales are for everyone!  And the author is right, some of those things were already ace as hell, it doesn't take much to highlight that.