Naughty Knitting

Pattern offered for free courtesy of [RattleFox]!

Go Wolfpack!

Rule 34: There are no exceptions.

[Rule 34]: if it exists, there is porn of it.

So the most interesting thing I learned all week is that there's a lesbian, D/s, puppy play porn based on the [A. R. Gurney play] Sylvia.

Sylvia (the play) is a story about a guy, Greg, who finds the titular dog in the park and brings her home to live with him and his wife, Kate. Hilarity and strife ensue. Sylvia is played by a human woman but is an actual dog in the world of the play.

Sylvia (the porn) is a story of a Kate and her lesbian partner and the adventures and sex they have with their puppy slave, Sylvia. Sylvia is played by a human pretending to be a dog but is actually a human. (If you're unfamiliar with puppy play, there you go.)

The porn was directed by my favorite feminist pornographer and sex-positive activist [Madison Young]. The fact she has a Sylvia porn makes her even more awesome. She did a very articulate [interview at The Rumpus] in May (link semi-NSFW).

Young's Sylvia DVD is on sale at her [online store] (link definitely NSFW).

Knitted Friend

I found an adorable ["Chubby Chirp"] pattern on [Ravelry] and went to using up some chunky scrap yarn. It's in 6 wpi yarn on size 10 needles.

The pattern is from Rebecca Danger of [The Big Book of Knitted Monsters] and she has several other free patterns available!



I only started knitting at the end of last year and I can't believe how fun it is. Now I can fit in with all the other knitter/crocheters at sci-fi cons!
[Find me] on Ravelry!

Cleaning Schedule!

Pinterest is super-fun and I want to follow your boards. Here's [mine].

I came across Becky's series of posts at Organizing Made Fun about [How to Have a {fake} Immaculate House]. She posted a copy of her cleaning schedule and said she spends about fifteen minutes a day on each task.

I made mine and put it on the fridge! It helps coordinate chores between me and Richard because we have easy goals for the day. Wednesdays? Someone should vacuum. Mondays? Someone should wipe down the guest bathrooms.

I hope I can stick to it! It's made things easier so far, and she emphasizes that it's TOTALLY FINE to skip something one week.
Anyway, thanks to Becky for the jump-start on actually writing down a plan.

Where the Hell is Matt? 2012

Matt travels around the world and dances with anyone who will let him film. Some of the earlier videos are amazing, but this one is still heart-warming!

He's also not a very good dancer and that makes it better.

Strawberry Peach Muffins

Peaches and strawberries are in season! This called for muffins.
Recipe is a slightly modified version of this one from [Modern Day Pirates].


Strawberry Peach Muffins
1 cup coarsely chopped peaches
1/2 cup coarsely chopped strawberries
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400F.
Dump everything in a bowl together and combine. It's gonna be lumpy.
Fill a greased muffin tin or papers 2/3 full.
Bake at 400F for about 18 minutes, give or take.
Yields 14-ish muffins.

New plate!

The name of my first crush is now my license plate.

A Declaration; The Thirty-Five Words

Jefferson violin solo at 2:15.


See also [The 35 Words] project at [Thomas Jefferson Hour] for the 35 words in over forty languages and counting.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
• He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
• He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
• He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
• For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
• For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
• For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
• For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
• For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

My mom is so creative

My mom, Kim, and I have the same day-by-day art calendar and it's really fun to talk about ones we saw and liked.

My mom took it a step further when she saw this photo of a teapot. She painted one of her old drop-leaf tables to match!

It's so pretty and fun. Good job, mom!

Finally tracking down that song you heard one time on the radio

Sometime during my freshman year of college (I'm dating myself but this was 2003), I was home visiting my parents for a weekend and I heard part of a song on the radio. I think the station was WUIN ["The Penguin"] or a cultural predecessor to WUIN and it was before the time when you could easily find station playlists online.

Anyway, I hear this acoustic-type song with female vocals and the words "Oh, my baby". A few months later I emailed the station to see if they knew what I was talking about and they offered a song that fit the description but wasn't really what I was looking for.

That song was "Right in Time" by Lucinda Williams and she became one of my favorite artists ever.



So I still thought about that other song periodically but now it's the end of 2011. I share a lab with another woman, and we take turns picking out radio stations or podcasts to listen to at work. Sometimes we listen to the Yahoo! Radio coffee house mix. A couple weeks ago, I heard "Come to Jesus" by Mindy Smith playing and IT WAS THAT SONG.



I haven't really listened to commercial radio since high school except for that one summer where I worked in a greenhouse and I listened to [100.7 The River], so apparently I missed the moderate success of Mindy Smith.

But yeah, I've experienced a rare kind of resolution and I keep thinking about Little Pete and how he never found that band again.

Oxhorn Brand Media, you blits

Oxhorn, also known as [Brandon M. Dennis], is a machinima animator and musician and other stuff.

So if you play WoW at all, it's likely that you've seen this video:



But there's so much more! There's a main storyline that starts with "Inventing Swear Words". What I like about it is that is stars TAUREN. And LADY TAUREN.



There's much music. In one of the videos, a character proposes to another by asking her to "forever pwn those noobs" with him. So cute!

I had the extreme pleasure of going to a panel by Oxhorn at Dragon*Con this year.

So many levels

From Colour Lovers: Holton Rower's 'Pour' Series

Way cool!

tl;dr is paint poured onto the middle of a structure or canvas and it runs down. It's kind of similar to the [rainbow cake] process.

Featured on the [ColourLovers.com] entry:

[Holton Rower] pours paint over a custom "canvas" of boxes and panels, one color on top of the other. The result is somewhat psychedelic but this kinetic-process created work is anything but one-dimensional.

Parrot Sings Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

Happy Holidays!

An argument for birth control

"Thanks to medical science, surgery and hygeine, we have reached an incredible peak of breeding success. We have practised death control and now we must balance it with birth control. It looks very much as though, during the next century or so, we are going to have to change our sexual ways at last. But if we do, it will not be because they failed, but because they succeeded too well...

We already know that if our populations go on increasing at their present terrifying rate, uncontrollable aggressiveness will become dramatically increased. This has been proved conclusively with laboratory experiments. Gross over-crowding will produce social stress and tensions that will shatter our community organizations long before it starves us to death... If a selective attempt is made to stem the breeding flood, with certain pairs permitted to breed freely and others prevented from doing so, then this will work against the essential cooperativeness of society--the pair-bonding pattern will suffer.

To sum up then, the best solution for ensuring world peace is the widespread promotion of contraception or abortion. Abortion is a drastic measure and can involve serious emotional disturbance... Contraception is obviously preferable, and and religious or other 'moralizing' factions that oppose it must face the fact that they are engaged in dangerous war-mongering."

-Desmond Morris, 1967 in The Naked Ape

The Path

"Where are you going? What do you carry?"



[The Path] is a short horror game from my favorite indie developer ever, [Tale of Tales].

In short, it's a modern take on the Little Red Riding Hood story with gothic sensibilities. The color scheme is almost exclusively red, black, and gray. The playable characters are six sisters ranging in age from nine to nineteen, each with her own personality.



The six sisters live in the city. In turn, their mother sends them to the edge of the city to venture through the woods to their grandmother's house. The only directions given are "Go to grandmother's house. And stay on the path!"

The trailer gives a taste of the story and art, but there's no actual dialog in the game. I love the creepy music though!



Of course, the only way to complete the game is to ignore all the rules and wander the forest. Each girl has her own story and background which can be revealed as you collect and interact with objects and unlock secret rooms in grandmother's house. Most importantly, each girl has her own personal wolf. Once she meets the wolf, the girl is never the same.



The game itself takes about four hours and describes itself as a "slow game". This is apparent on several levels. Physically, the girls do not walk or run faster than a normal human. They don't move at the usual faster-than-real-life speeds that are typical of game characters. Also, the game itself doesn't have timers or puzzles or even really obstacles. The focus is on getting lost in the woods and exploring. There's also a lot of waiting to allow the girls to go through their own motions and move the action along.

As you explore, there are various creepy objects scattered around that different girls can interact with in different ways. There are also shiny flowers that the girls desire to pick (thus drawing them and you further into the forest) and six "attraction" areas. These areas are integral to the story and each girl has one that she can interact with in a special way.

There's also a neat (and scary!) mechanic where when you direct the girl to run the camera pans out, the screen blurs and darkens, and a pounding heartbeat comes to the auditory foreground. This really helps to facilitate the "lost" feeling because it's difficult to see where you're going and where you've been.

The Drama Princess AI also gives a lot of autonomy to the girls. If you get them close enough to an object they will interact with it on their own. Also, if you find yourself lost you can leave the girl alone and she will start acting nervous and afraid, attracting the Girl in White who will lead you back to the path. The idea that you have to give up control at points in the game (and wait) to progress contributes to the "slow game" feel.



What I liked most about the game was how open to interpretation the stories are. The game clearly says something about what it means to grow up, but while there is no violence or sex in the game there is possible implied sexual violence. I'm not really sure what it all says about the victimization of women and becoming a woman, but not all the wolves are men or are even human. The age of the girls definitely effect their experiences and choices. (Various interpretations of the events and wolves are discussed ad nauseum on the Tale of Tales [forums] of which I am a member.) I'd love to discuss the stories in detail but I don't want to give too much away. At any rate, I'm a big scaredy-cat so I was pretty well afraid during my first run.



The game takes about four hours to complete on the first run and has decent replay value. I found it compelling and even after owning it for about four months I still find myself ruminating over my gameplay experience.

To sum up:
[The Path]
Worth buying
$10 on [Steam] or [direct from Tale of Tales]
There's a free [demo]ish
Also available for Mac

Blueberry Garden

I'll be honest. I love weird indie games. Right now, my favorite weird indie game is Erik Svedang's platformer [Blueberry Garden].

I don't want to ruin the magic of it for you, but basically you're a flying bird man in beautifully illustrated world of berries, men wearing party hats, chickens, and oversized objects.

It's an acid trip of whimsy and relaxing game play with a killer (but simple) piano soundtrack.

Here's the trailer:


Here are some screenies from my gameplay:




I had been waiting for this game to come out since it was announced in early 2008. I was finally set to launch on Valve's [Steam] service in June but then faced more delays. It finally launched in the middle of June. I bought it within hours of release and I'm so glad! I'm totally down with the art style and the mood. And the story is simple, vaguely nonsensical, and compelling once you discover it.

This is a great little game--but let yourself play until the end of the level--you'll know when you get there.

To sum up:
[Blueberry Garden]
Worth buying
[$5 on Steam]
There's a free [demo].

By the way, there's a link to my Steam profile on the sidebar. I'll repost it here since it's relevant.

Combinations

I have never lived with a romantic partner--until now. I've lived with men and women--and almost six years with my hetero-lifemate, D--in single and mixed gender apartments. In general, boys are messier but it might be an age thing. We were all young then.

Anyway, [Phil] and I have been in the process of moving in together. It's exciting! I hate moving and he hates cleaning, so it's a perfect storm of procrastination. I have all my essentials moved in and set up--pets, plants, electronics, clothes, my bathroom--as well as some odds and ends. I can't wait to start decorating and making it feel like "our" place and not "Phil's man cave/bachelor pad".

We've been neighbors and it's been super convenient to pop back and forth whenever I felt like it, but the stress of maintaining two residences kind of wears down on you. While I did spend a lot of time at my own place, I can count the number of times I've slept in my own bed in the last three years.

I guess I'm just really excited about it. I can't wait to paint! The walls are really dirty and the kitchen is papered with BLUE PLAID. No lie, it's awful.

While Phil was out of the country I spent a lot of time overhauling the house so at least everything would be clean* (and it is). For example, I don't think Phil has ever cleaned his microwave.




Meanwhile I've been taking this opportunity to seriously cut down on all the junk I have. I mean, I don't really have a lot of junk but it's nice to super-simplify. If I haven't moved it to the new place by now, I probably don't need it (except all my books, those are just waiting on shelves and some art).

I think Phil is excited too because I like to clean and do laundry and I fixed all the toilets. And it's always cool to split bills with someone else!

It's a little scary too!

And D, you've been the best hetero-lifemate ever. I'll miss you even though you basically already moved out. Funny story: even though I've lived with D so long and even shared a dorm for a couple years I had never seen her breasts. It wasn't until a couple months ago when I was helping her try on wedding dresses that I finally saw them. We were apparently very modest around each other.

*Clean in the sense that everything is clean except the third bedroom where I stored all of Phil's junk that I didn't know what to do with it or that he hasn't touched in a couple years and I don't know why he still has it as well as a dozen loads of laundry including brand new shirts.

Spring is here!

I have my [April Flora photoset] from the JC Raulston Arboretum up! It's over sixty photos that I took with [Philihp's] Nikon d40. Icarus, [Michael] and Sterlic came along as well.
Do you have any of these plants blooming in your general vicinity? Some highlights:






There was also a [new post on mistletoe] up on the flower blog. Mistletoe berries look like semen according to the Celts.

Oh, and here's a picture of Icarus in a dogwood tree: