Technical Difficulties

I hate to do this, but I have had enough of the freaking endless spam that now infests LiveJournal. I have turned off anonymous comments.

To all of you who do not have a LiveJournal and who have commented on my blog, I'm sorry. Please believe, this is not about you and not caused by anything you did. It's about the bloody spam.

A weird little miracle occurred. The Saab guys found two '97 9000 ignition switches that had been shelved wrong. I got one, and then apparently another guy came in today with the exact same problem, and he got the other.

So, you know, if you're a weirdo like me still driving a '97 Saab 9000, it looks like you can expect your ignition switch to fail on you any time now.

You're welcome.

I have acquired a post office box.

Sarah Monette
P.O. Box 259838
Madison, WI 53725

[For anyone whose eyes glaze over at long lists.]

As part of the Ben Jonson Memorial Fundraiser, I would like to do a limited edition chapbook of the four uncollected Booth stories: "The Replacement," "The World Without Sleep," "White Charles," and "The Yellow Dressing Gown." Price would be $20; after production costs, all money will be donated to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital's Companion Animal Fund.

By "limited edition," I mean a print run of 50. Unnatural Creatures will be on sale from 02/02 2:00 P.M. CST to 02/03 2:00 P.M. CST. This will be a "speak now or forever hold your peace" kind of deal.

If you would be interested in this chapbook, please leave a comment either here or here. A comment is not a commitment.

Thank you!

For those of you who find your mammary hypertrophy* getting in the way of your physical endeavors, I can report that Title 9's Last Resort Bra (a.k.a. the Enell Sports Bra) really does perform as advertised. It is expensive like whoa ($60 a pop) and hard as hell to get into (they are absolutely correct when they warn you that the proper size will feel too small when you start), but it works. I had been doubling up my sports bras to withstand the sitting trot, and the Enell bra is actually better. Once I get into it, I don't have to think about my breasts again until I take it off.

Which, frankly, is what I want from a bra.

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*Thank you, Lois McMaster Bujold and Ethan of Athos, for that phrase.

Please disassociate me in your mind from the famous French painter, Claude Monet. Instead, think of the Radio City Rockettes. That should clear up any lingering mental confusion.

ETA: And if not, try this handy mnemonic: "When you MOW the tennis court, please be careful of the NET."

For anyone who has missed it, the Muppets are embarking on a bit of a renaissance on YouTube: MuppetsStudio's Channel. I cannot, personally, recommend Beaker's "Ode to Joy" highly enough.

1. My (rather pathetic) Storytellers Unplugged column for August is here.

2. WATERLOG (yesterday)
TIME: 41 min.
DISTANCE: 5 mi.
TOTAL DISTANCE: 258.1 mi.
DISTRACTION: The Dead Zone, "Enemy Mind"
SHIRE RECKONING: In thickets

3. This Dead Zone episode gets points for giving the girl agency. She has hard-earned knowledge that Johnny doesn't; she is an active participant in saving herself. My worst problem with the episode, which is purely my problem, is that the cougar is so beautiful I keep forgetting it's symbolically the bad guy.

4. Shift, Shift 2, Shift 3, and Shift 4 are flash games that make brilliant, and frequently fiendish, use of their medium.

5. I will have more to say about Anna Katharine Green when I've finished reading The Leavenworth Case, but if you're going to be near Milwaukee anytime before the twenty-third, I highly recommend the Milwaukee Art Museum's current exhibition, "American Originals," on Charles Rohlfs' furniture and the paintings of the Eight (Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan).

(Anna Katharine Green, whom I had heard of as the first American woman mystery writer, was Charles Rohlfs' wife; the exhibition and the accompanying book, The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs by Joseph Cunningham, are concerned to emphasize her collaboration with her husband, and the exhibition store made me very happy by having copies of one of Green's books: The Leavenworth Case, as mentioned above.)

If your comment is:

(a.) anonymous
(b.) extremely short
(c.) in a language I can't read*
(d.) any combination of the above

I will assume it is spam and delete it.

If it was a sincere effort to communicate, please try again.

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*Languages I can read: English, French, Middle English if you give me a dictionary and plenty of time, Anglo-Saxon ditto, Latin ditto, ancient Greek ditto only more so. I have German and Italian dictionaries, and I thought I had a Spanish dictionary, but that seems to be a myth.

Normal service will resume tomorrow.

For tonight, the plan is to collapse in a corner and twitch quietly.