Posts by Jolisa
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Rob, I'm really tempted to go and see if I can find your mythical cemetery in person. But virtually speaking, do you think it might be this one?
Also, am wondering what took you to Salem CT... it's an out-of-the-way sort of place. The sort of place where pirates hide treasure:
Captain Kidd was believed to have buried treasure in the woods of Salem.
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the winter days are brutally shorter in Christchurch than Ithaca.
So you can multiply your Ithaca SAD by about 102 per cent to reach how lousy poor Emma is feeling...
Ouch. That is indeed brutal. (Also, dude: epic retroactive fail on persuading us that it would have been a good idea to move back to Chch, had that particular situation panned out! ).
Perversely, or is it just that youth offers some inoculation against such things (or is it just that I was coming from damp drizzly grizzly Auckland), I recall my Chch winters as exhilarating. The sky was enormous and mostly blue, and the air was dry and thus, miraculously, so was I. And the sublime poisonous miasma of woodsmoke in the air, lending the whole city the feel of a Victorian gentleman's club... Like I said, perverse.
I wish I could send you all some of our sunshine today, so unbelievably welcome after 6 months of grey New England winter.
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Joe, of course I then misread your location line as "Down in the barn, behind my knees".
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SAD was a frequent topic of discussion when I lived in Ithaca, New York, where the winters are long, the skies are gloweringly low, and the daylight is brutally short. My first winter there, it started snowing in October and kept it up till Mother's Day. The sheer novelty of it all - and, I'm convinced, the reflected light bouncing off all that fluffy Narnia snow - kept me happy.
The second winter, not so much. It was grey and grim and I'm still shocked (but glad) that I survived it.
Anyway, there was much local legend about how to battle the winter blues. Exercise, yes, although that's easier said than done when you have to not only get out of bed but put on several layers of clothing so as not to freeze to death. People swore by red wine, and guzzled it in gallons. One flatmate had a lightbox whose glow he religiously bathed in morning and night. Full-spectrum lightbulbs were all the rage.
Most weirdly of all, loofahs were said to be the secret weapon against seasonal depression. A vigorous scrub all over in a hot bath spiked with baby oil was the prescription. I think it was meant to give you a huge pain-relieving endorphin rush, like eating raw chillies.
I'm not sure, but presumably a similar effect could be obtained by way of a punishing Swedish massage, or a jolly good spanking? Certainly worth some scientific investigation.
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Breeding ponies. Still for stew, ultimately, yes, but one way to maximise your initial pony investment in the short term.
Over here, George W Bush gave us a nice tax cut a couple of years ago. Ours went into the bank, but apparently everyone else went shopping, and the economy grew and grew and grew. Like a beanstalk. With a castle at the top. And we all lived happily ever after, I think? Or was that another story?
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Absolutely. I mean, short of tattooing "take me" on their foreheads, it's hard to see how much clearer those chaps could make their intentions.
(Also, this thread had me digging through my archives in search of the relevant Kaz Cooke cartoon - the one with the caption "I say, Kath, you're looking pretty fetching in that boiler suit.")
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Surely Colin could find something he likes here?
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PS: He got off the collar, and we didn't put it back. Seriously not worth the grief.
But shame is a crucial part of the healing process!
Ah, literature. Somewhere in a leafy suburb a posh kitty is probly crapping on shredded copies of Trowenna Sea
As I was saying...
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And - mis-direction, pseudo-empathy, and bluffing still would work perfectly fine in that line of work even now I would think (paticularly with a taser close to hand.)
Heh. That's also a pretty accurate description of how I just persuaded my malingering children to stop swinging the lead and go to school on a day when I'm hoping to get a lot of editing done. (But without the taser.)
Parent = half BFF, half bouncer. I'd never thought of it that way before. Ta, Islander :-)
Back on thread: these guys are so totally up for it.
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Ditto to Hicksville. I don't understand it, but I really like it.
In book news, I'm still reeling from what others in the book biz are calling Penguin's 3rd strike. Are they out yet?
Seriously though, I'm waiting for the announcement that henceforth Penguin's books will be edited by people who know of what they edit. A grand old name and reputation is at stake. (Yes, of course it's also up to the authors not to plunder Witipedia -- or other authors -- but this latest book, for example, clearly wasn't proofed by a gardener of any stripe, and that's a problem).
Oh, and while they're at it, can they bring back the Penguincubator? Because that would be fun.