And about time too

I finally watched Serenity. I was frightfully busy while it was in theatres, plus I don't like watching amazingly choreographed flight sequences on a giant screen (sarcasm), but I finally saw it last night in the comfort of my cramped apartment. Like millions of others, I didn't even know about Firefly while it was airing on Fox, and only found out about it after I saw my friend's DVD collection. I thought it was a little much to buy several DVDs for a show that was so bad it had to be cancelled! Then I watched said DVDs and was blown away. I won't try to explain the appeal, but it's the best scifi series ever. Unlike many other fans of the series, I actually hate scifi tv shows. I love novels, and I can enjoy some movies, but shows just bore me to tears, not to mention making me cringe a little. The skimpy outfits, the anachronistic pop culture-speak, the humanoid aliens. Trekkie I am not. So Firefly was quite an experience for me, and I'm devoutly hoping it gets "uncancelled" (the exact lingo used in the industry, ya know). Serenity was quite, quite good, and I plan to buy the DVD after a while so I can watch it again and again. By "after a while", I'm delicately saying that I'm so broke I couldn't fork over the $20 bucks if I wanted to eat in the next week. Gorram student stipend.

I love Rob Thomas, I love Rob Thomas, I love Rob Thomas

"Ever the Same"

We were drawn from the weeds
We were brave like soldiers
Falling down under the pale moonlight
You were holding to me
Like a someone broken
And I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now

Just let me hold you while you're falling apart
Just let me hold you so we both fall down

Fall on me
Tell me everything you want me to be
Forever with you forever in me
Ever the same

We would stand in the wind
We were free like water
Flowing down
Under the warmth of the sun
Now it's cold and we're scared
And we've both been shaken
Look at us
Man, this doesn't need to be the end

Just let me hold you while you're falling apart
Just let me hold you so we both fall down

Fall on me tell me everything you want me to be
Forever with you
Forever in me
Ever the same
Call on me
I'll be there for you and you'll be there for me
Forever it's you
Forever in me
Ever the same

You may need me there
To carry all your weight
But you're no burden I assure
You tide me over
With a warmth I'll not forget
But I can only give you love

Talib at Yale

I read a really fantastic article in the New York Times Magazine on Rahmatullah Hashemi, better known as the Taliban's "roving diplomat" before their demise (he even appears on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911). Hashemi is a freshman at Yale, studying polsci; the article is both sympathetic and comprehensive. A great read and currently available online (click on title).

Speaking of food...

I know the famine in East Africa is old news, but we keep getting ever more grim news about the number of people at risk (now estimated at 11 M), the delay in rain, and the puny nature of donations so far. How can people die of starvation in the 21st century?

Browsing...

Eating the Somali Way is a short page on Somali foods, with an intriguing recipe for a crabmeat stew! I've got to give it a try soon, I didn't even know Somalis ate crustaceans.

Public speaking

I had to give a PowerPoint presentation yesterday morning. About 200 people in the audience, mostly graduate students, faculty, and applicants to the graduate program being recruited by the school. I hate hate hate public speaking. Fortunately, there's a pretty rigid formula for these things: give background of project, some theories, research design and protocols, and preliminary results. Then field questions, which is the hardest part since it's not scripted. I was okay for the most part, except when this nasty nasty nasty researcher--whose lab is in "competition" with ours--needled me about some small insignificant point. I was very firm and polite at first, but covert hostility freaks me out, and I ended up just staring at him after he wouldn't let it go. Fortunately the dean is a really nice person and jumped to my (or rather my project's) defense.

I've resolved never to answer questions from that man. If he raises his hand and someone else also has a question, I will ignore him. If he's the only one with a question, I will ignore him.

And to think I nearly went to the b@stard's lab.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sarah McLachlan gets all conscientious

World On Fire


View more video clips at Yashi

The Years of Rice and Salt

I've read a few more chapters. Remember the little African boy I mentioned before? I thought he was going to be a bit player but he turns out to be a major character. Kyu ends up wreaking havoc in vengeance for being made into a eunuch. First, after much planning and thought, he kills his "owner", steals money from him and sets fire to the city to facilitate his escape (when his fellow slave Bold is shocked at the fire, Kyu replies rather callously that "They are Chinese, there's more than enough to take their place"). With forged papers and his friend Bold acting as his owner, Kyu decides to travel to the Chinese capital to kill the Emperor because,

They'll conquer the whole world, cut all the boys, and all the children will be theirs, and the whole world will end up Chinese.

It made me laugh. Next, after arriving at the capital he causes all kinds of problems for the emperor and his heir, which ends with the death of both Kyu and Bold. But no fear. Apparently there's an afterlife and Kyu is confronting the Lord of Death for judgement in the current chapter. Knowing Kyu, it's the Lord of Death who'll have to justify his actions.

The novel is written in a sort of Asian style. There are impromptu little poems when plain prose won't do justice to the descriptions. Chapters end with personal invitations to continue:

We are as shocked as you are by this development, and don't know what happened next, but no doubt the next chapter will tell us.

It was a little jarring the first time, but one gets used to it. Plus it's a little entertaining and occasionally foreshadows nicely.

The Prodigal

Shot
My back itches to kiss the wall
But my feet stay rooted
Out of my hands the raw rice drifts down
Like leaves on a dead tree
Like blood
Shout
A stranger waves
A demon strapped to his back
He laughs and embraces me
Little sister how you’ve grown
I hold still
Sweat and gunpowder surround me

This, according to "plant collector" Frank Horwood, is a Spiny-tailed Uromastyx, found in northeastern Somalia (from Mudug to Bari, maybe?). Uromastyx macfadyeni, the likely species of this example, is, according to a reptile shop in Temecula, California, a sexually dimorphic species with the males being bright sky blue to turquoise green with yellow and tan spotting on their backs. Females are duller, with more tan and brown and indigo blue coloring on their faces and forelegs. They tend to be shy at first but warm up after awhile. Their movements are quick and they are very alert and curious.
They are being sold at a few pet stores, and appear to fetch a nice price because of their rarity. I think they are pretty and interesting (the previous link provides some gorgeous pictures). Growing up in the Mudug region, I recall being in mortal terror of giant lizards (abeeso), big enough to swallow a recalcitrant child--much like their carnivorous cousins the crocodiles. Uromastyx seems to be no bigger than a gerbil, but I was a lot smaller then.

He really posed for it!

 

What I am reading right now...

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's an alternate history type of novel, describing what would happen if the Great Plague had wiped out virtually all Europeans instead of 1/3 or so that actually died. The blurb describes,

...[A] universe where the first ship to reach the New World travels across the Pacific Ocean from China and colonization spreads from west to east. This is a universe where the Industrial Revolution is triggered by the world's greatest scientific minds--in India. This is a universe where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions and Christianity is merely a historical footnote.

All very intriguing, and I'm certainly enjoying the first few chapters. I was excited to see Mogadishu on a map provided at the beginning of the first section, but so far it is only mentioned in passing. And then only as an "Arab trading post". Oh well, maybe later on we will get a loving description of Hawl Wadaag and Jidka Sodonka...

Scifi.com has a review, which I haven't read since I hate reading reviews before I read the book (or watch the movie). I got the book from a friend, who though I might enjoy it.

I'll write a few notes here later, as I'm reading the book. So far the most hair-raising thing I've read in a while details the castration of a skinny African boy by Chinese slavetraders. *Shudders* I actually gasped out loud at a key scene. You know, the FGM practiced in Somalia and other parts of Africa has always struck me as a particularly mean-spirited act carried out by women who had to undergo the same procedure themselves, so they take it out on the younger generation (if it had to happen to me, why not her?). In Robinson's book, the eunuch who purchases the slaves is said to have the same mentality, hating men who are "intact". When people explain evil, they don't give enough credit to simple xaasidnimo.

Well, back to the novel for me.

First, the Keats poem that inspired my blog name. It contains the famous line--

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

It's a fine, quotable poem and rolls off the tongue without too much difficulty. Enjoy.

muahaha.