5 days, 20 hours, 35 minutes = one paper, one seminar, one exam

[subterrain]

My dad just signed off a ten-word email with old one hand. As in:

good to know.

surgery went well.

old one hand

It's kind of like I'm receiving coded riddle emails from my maimed arch-nemesis, a rogue privateering sea captain confirming the date of our french polynesian rendezvous, where he'll hand over my captured ward (a stubborn teenage boy in a ruffled collar from a good family) who he's recently performed some kind of high-seas butchery on with a hacksaw and a bottle of rum, because an encounter with the British fleet - my own ship, mayhaps? - put a cannonball through my ward's foot, and when I see him the boy will be pale but stoic and Old One Hand will threaten to walk him off the plank until I commit some act of derring-do, and it is revealed that my arch-nemesis has always been my estranged father, and by our own similarities in the midst of an action sequence we will be reconciled.

Fortunately, I know my dad was not getting a hand amputated. So. Crisis averted. I will not be joining the navy any time soon.

'Tis the season of awkward gifts and tokens from people you don't like well enough to have got gifts for yourself. In this case: bag of chocolate, and a silkscreened print. :/ One more reason to work people up so I can blacklist Christmas entirely next year. The secret is to have a social circle so small or held at perfect arms-length, so they'd never think of you, either, and then tell the people you actually care about that you refuse to buy into the megatheocorporatocracy. I WILL GET THERE. I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL.

Comments

[vinylroad.livejournal.com]

I love when I get emails that are written like they're being charged by the letter. I think it's something about the older generation. They don't like to waste anything: food, clothing, words. I still love getting my telegraph-esque emails from my grandfather.

I have been up ALL NIGHT, but I want to email you re: the comment in my last post, so I will do that as soon as I can write an email and not sound like a moron. Or maybe that's just asking too much.

I AM GOING TO BUY YOU A JEWEL-ENCRUSTED JET. MERRY CORPORATEMAS.

[subterrain.livejournal.com]

I also think it's the hands shriveled into claws by painful arthritis. I know my grandfolks just dictate emails to my cousins in return for food. It's a good deal.

DUDE IT'S 11:00 AM WHERE YOU ARE. GO TO BED.

[thissugarcane.livejournal.com]

you'd think that knowing students / being a student people would be all about no gifts. I mean, shit yo. I'm not even getting anything for my (also grad student) girlfriend, we've decided that money is just so much of a missing object.

[subterrain.livejournal.com]

inorite? Like, I appreciate the toblerone, I do, but it's kind of awkward if you're not going to warn me that we're doing some kind of exchange first, right? I AM NOT NATURALLY THAT GIVING.

Good on you and the gf. Love needs no paltry objects, for reelz.

[thissugarcane.livejournal.com]

I would typically be giving gifts, i won't lie, but they would be random and like-- I suck at gifts when I *have* to give them, you know? I like stocking stuffers, and I like maybe buying 3 presents for christmas. but then any longer of a list and I'm all, oh my god, really? no. I don't want to bother. *G*

[subterrain.livejournal.com]

I just find it difficult to keep more than two people's wants in my head at any given time. When I'm at the beginning of a twelve-person list I may as well just starting trolling the gutters for used condoms and dead leaves, I am that overwhelmed.

[thissugarcane.livejournal.com]

it's true; I can only buy presents for a couple of people. any more than that and I'm all "wtf? no. forget it. only you three."

which works well for those few people? but not so well for everyone else.

[emilytheodd.livejournal.com]

You sort of just made my ENTIRE DAY with that little scenario there (I mean, as the amputations are not in real life). I have read Rafael Sabatini's swashbuckling Captain Blood approximately a bajillion times, and that feels like something that would happen in that book, so now I've pirates on my mind rather than law school.

Figuring out for whom to get what - if anything - is a complex calculus and I've never been good at math.

[subterrain.livejournal.com]

I HAVE NO IDEA WHO CAPTAIN BLOOD IS. LET ME LOOK INTO THIS. I was def thinking more Hornblower, which is always sadly lacking in the dirty swashbuckling department, but always makes up for it in the gentile handing-over-of-swords-good-sirs. V. AWES.

[emilytheodd.livejournal.com]

So the book was written in (I think?) the 30s and there are bits where you'll be like "okay, moving on" (everyone in the books is v. white, and also the women are pretty delicate). So: disclaimer. But I'm completely sentimental about it because I read it first when I was maybe eleven, and also it is sort of the dictionary definition of swashbuckling. It's kind of amazing.

[subterrain.livejournal.com]

I was so into Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan series when I was that age that I cannot even judge the anglo in the anglo-adventure novel. Savage tribes, wild apes, ant men, etc. I will definitely be looking into this!

[emilytheodd.livejournal.com]

There are a few new paperback editions, so it oughtn't be too hard to find, but OMG I have a question: did you ever read Burrough's The Mad King (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mad_King)? Totally swashbuckling, totally a rip-off of The Prisoner of Zenda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda) but I don't even care because I love it so.

Just tell them you're giving to the CSPD (Canadian Society of Perverts and Deviants) in lieu. :D

[delighter.livejournal.com]

This made me chuckle more than once today. But why did your Dad get surgery?? Old One Hand indeed.

Hi. Crepes. What? Crepes. I have crepes on the mind grapes.

I actually have a half-finished email that alludes to this, but I am distracted by syrup possibilities and combinations. Fact: I've watched the first three eps of True Blood and we are not enamored. The only character who doesn't make me squawk at the screen in annoyance is Jason, and that's only because I love a douche. Anna Paquin, Paige. I don't know if I can do it. She's just so terrible. Tell me, how long do I have to hang on? Mad Men took me until almost the end of season 1, but I'm glad I stuck it out.

[subterrain.livejournal.com]

I have to tell you that by all accounts, including my own reluctant admission, Sookie only gets worse. She's pretty much on par with Bella in Twilight for the 'everyone loves me but no one knows why' quality of her existence. I really watch it for Tara, and Jason, and Lafayette. Probably you will enjoy Jason's subplot in #4, so definitely power through that one, but if you're not feeling it, you're not feeling it.

I won't lie: I'm heartbroken by our continuing crap luck. Although, it's probably a good thing True Blood isn't doing it for you because the fandom sucks as a whole, so if the show didn't make you throw a fit, the fans would've. :(