Sporadically speaking

"Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is."

- Game of Thrones "The Climb"

"Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You’re so serious, so old. Everything’s important with you, everything’s great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can’t you ever be comfortable – and unimportant?"

"No."

- Rand, A., 1996, p. 89. The Fountainhead. New York: Signet.

"Alas! this is not now the first time, but oft before, O Creon,
hath my reputation injured me and caused sore mischief. Wherefore
whoso is wise in his generation ought never to have his children taught
to be too clever; for besides the reputation they get for idleness,
they purchase bitter odium from the citizens. For if thou shouldst
import new learning amongst dullards, thou wilt be thought a useless
trifler, void of knowledge; while if thy fame in the city o'ertops
that of the pretenders to cunning knowledge, thou wilt win their dislike.
I too myself share in this ill-luck. Some think me clever and hate
me, others say I am too reserved, and some the very reverse; others
find me hard to please and not so very clever after all."

- Euripides' Medea (trans. E. P. Coleridge)

'Anybody any good at what they do, that's what they are, right?'

- Gibson, W., 1993, p. 66. Neuromancer. London: HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy

I was horrified by my first glimpse of Holmes next morning, for he sat by the fire holding his tiny hypodermic syringe. I associated that instrument with the single weakness of his nature, and I feared the worst when I saw it glittering in his hand. He laughed at my expression of dismay, and laid it upon the table.

"No, no, my dear fellow, there is no cause for alarm. It is not upon this occasion the instrument of evil, but it will rather prove to be the key which will unlock our mystery. On this syringe I base all my hopes."
- Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter)


This quote taken out of context amuses me far too much simply because it could broadly be taken to be a case of Holmes saying “Don’t worry, old chap. I’ve take some coke now everything’s going to be fine”.

In other news, I received a very polite friending request via pm over the weekend and now that I’ve come round to respond to it I’ve discovered that the sender has their LJ messaging function set to only allow messages from people they’ve already friended or perhaps from nobody at all, since LJ won’t tell me which it is specifically. I’ve no idea what the default setting is since I have mine set to allow messages from all registered users but it does seems just like LJ to have any defaults set to the most awkward option possible.

A little while ago I got into a small affray over a racial assumption made by a white person about POC. It was a small issue but just the sort of one that sets POC off because it’s usually either indicative of larger issues or can lead to them if left unchecked.

( Read more... )

Taken from an IM conversation.

imperial_artist: You have only evolved one mouse button. This is insufficiently advanced.
nekonexus: *rolls a ball
imperial_artist: It bites my fingers.