Coloring in the odd figure in the illustrations of your 1533 Venetian edition of Virgil's collected works (accuratissime castigata, et in pristinam formam restituta, cum acerrime iudicii virorum commentariis) -- well, hey, the princeps poetarum (not to mention his commentators) can get a bit long-winded when he's hip-deep in an epic simile, and doodling keeps the hand busy while the mind grapples with the text.

Coloring so thoroughly that ink bleeds through the paper and obscures the text of not one but several neighboring leaves might, however, be construed as absence of mind, if not outright vandalism.

Drawing a mustache and beard on Dido merely demonstrates your childishness.

Thank goodness you got bored like everyone else and started skimming after book VI of the Aeneid. Or so I judge from a sudden absence of ink blots.

House-of-Famed blogger Geoffrey Chaucer reports:

Long tyme nowe, Ich have been preparing a book of blog, and the labour ys al moost doon. Plese pardon, gentil rederes, my lak of postingnesse, but a smal delaye heere ys peraventure worth a solid volume the which ye kan underlyne and spille egg-salad upon and take yn to yower jacuzzi whanne the mood stryketh yow (for woe to the man who taketh his laptop yn to the jacuzzi, Ich have lerned to my gret cost on a chillye November night).

Ich am preorderéd.

Catherine Jinks, The Reformed Vampire Support Group

Contrary to what you may have read in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series or the Zadia Bloodstone novels of N.E. Harris, vampires are not glamorous. ( Read more... )

From the lavishly illustrated German edition of Vegetius's De re militari, as printed by Hans Knappe in 1511, I give you:Renaissance scuba gear.
Some days I just love my job to death.

Many thanks to the Munich Digitisation Centre for having the good taste to get this one online. I hope we'll be doing the same at least for the hand-colored plates in our copy.

I had not really thought about the fact that a decade had ended until I came and read livejournal today. I did not reflect on the year or the decade on December 31st or January 1st.

For the most part, my thought is, "I'm 10 years closer to dying."

Sniffle. Goshwow! Sniffle! [rewinds to beginning and watches again ...]

Many people of a certain age (i.e. mine) in the U.S. got their introduction to anime through Star Blazers, an English dub-and-edit of Space Battleship Yamato. It hasn't aged well, IMO, but I remember it fondly: it was my introduction to progressive serial narrative (they went somewhere and came back to solve the plot problem! people even DIED! OhEmGee!). So when I saw this:


... well, let's just say the SQUEE! factor was pretty darn acute. Given all the licensing hassles surrounding this property, I doubt I'll see it unless I import it, but still ... my inner twelve-year-old is settling down on the couch in the t.v. room and humming, "'Our Star Blazers!'"

'The end of 2009 already happened' you may justifiably and accusingly say unto me. True!

But the end of 2009 was exceedingly busy, so I only have the chance to tell you about it now.

Not busy in a GLAMOROUS way, let me hasten to assure you. Being glamorous is not really my style. I have just had piles of stuff to do! Also there was the Christmas Day Disaster.

So I awoke on Christmas Day alone in the Cherry Bomb, as my housemates Jennet Wilde the DJ and the Durham Lass the Dead Bodies and Old Stuff Specialist were at their homes over Christmas.

Later I was picked up and brought to my family homestead for dinner by my uncle, who is an opera-fan piano-playing diplomat, and my aunt, who lives in Australia among oranges and silversmiths. We had a most delightful Christmas Day, and then it was time to return to the Cherry Bomb. I cannot stay at the family homestead, as they have turned my room into a gym.

This is not the act of wanton, daughter-hating cruelty it might appear at first: the gym still has my bed and books in it. But waking in the dead of night, I find it very disquieting to have gym equipment strewn about the room. They are dark menacing shapes.

SARAH (waking confused): Oh God what is that looming over my bed? Is it a wildebeest?
SARAH (calming): No, it is an exercycle.
SARAH (collapsing back on the bed): I would prefer a wildebeest.

So home I went, shivering in my crimson party frock, to a dark chilly house. Immediately I turned on both lights and kettle.

Then I was plunged into dark and bitter cold.

SARAH (calls the Durham Lass): The curse has fallen upon me.
DURHAM LASS: Explain with real people speech.
SARAH: Where do we keep our fuse box?
DURHAM LASS: Up... high... somewhere. In the hall.
SARAH: OKAY. I'm going to climb up on a chair.
DURHAM LASS: Stay on the phone, you have to stay on the phone! What if you fall off the chair and bump your noggin and we find you four days later? DEAD.
SARAH: OKAY. I'm going to stay on the phone. Oh, oh, going over sideways - feeling for box. Oh no, going over sideways.
DURHAM LASS: Why do you keep falling down?
SARAH: This isn't easy to do in the dark and high heels.
DURHAM LASS: Why are you still wearing your heels?
SARAH: ... I have a perfectly good reason for that.
DURHAM LASS: What is it?
SARAH (with dignity): I cannot tell you that at this time.

Fumbling and flailing in the night, I eventually got the lights back on. Then I tottered over to the kettle.

It had stopped working.

I gestured with my kettle, a kettle of despair and not tea. Then I trailed sadly to my bed, where I created a fort of blankets. I succumbed to illness and stayed in the blanket fort for many days.

Until it was time to get on a flight to Boston! The grumpy Frenchman on the plane seat beside me seemed annoyed by how sickly I was

When I arrived, I overcame illness by force of will! And then there was a party with rhinestone eyepatches, bald cats in tuxedoes, and assorted weaponry. I wore my crimson party dress and a pink wig. I am so tasteful. Tasteful like a disco ball.

The next day 2010 started off with a bang. I was in the cellar helping sweep up.

HOLLY: Sarah, come up here.
SARAH: No, I wish to help! There is glitter everywhere Holly - it is like a vampire exploded down here.
HOLLY: Sarah COME HERE.
SARAH: I am here.
HOLLY: Congratulations. You are a Cybils finalist!

Every year a community of bloggers puts out a list of finalists for Cybils awards, awards given out for lit'rary merit! I am extremely complimented to be a finalist, and to be a finalist in such great company!

Now as you may all know (because I never stop talking about it!) 2009 is the year my first book came out.

Having a book out, it is the weirdest thing! For of course I have spent years and years and yeeeeears (nineteen years, to be precise) writing books, hoping one day people would read them and tell me what they thought about them and hopefully they would like them and and and...

It makes one a Crazy Person, as I have often mentioned, and perhaps too often given practical demonstrations of. For you are now obsessively anxious about whether people will read this book, and what they will think.

And then things like starred reviews, and the Carnegie nomination, and now being a Cybils finalist happen, and it is glorious. Because you did what you always wanted to do, and other people saw what you were doing, and said that you did it well.

Fame, you glittering bauble, now you are mine!

... Oh, not really? Oh, well.

2009 was both glorious and incredibly nerve-wracking for me. Lots of unpleasant stuff happened which I am truly glad to have over with. Lots of truly amazing things happened, and all my favourites had to do with my book: the book came out, I got to meet lots of you blog readers, Scott Westerfeld and I travelled about America facing fiery and icy danger, my first anthology The Eternal Kiss came out, I dyed my hair pink and... wait, that was a terrible thing. With a story attached to it that one day I will tell you.

In 2010 the paperback of Demon's Lexicon will come out in the US (meaning with luck: more people reading it!) and Demon's Covenant will come out. (Also, at least one other anthology.) Second books, so nerve-wracking! Will people like it as well as the first? Will I wear my pink wig to events? So many QUESTIONS!

And I have lots of things to work on: Demon's Talisman to finish, short stories to write, a new book to write, a couple of secret things to write! I have my December book to give away, which I will do very shortly. And I have many more adventures to have.

Every day of 2010 so far, I have had good news! I wish you all the same.

Another Xmas season down.

The slideshow is here.

Had a lot of fun this day.

The slideshow is here.

http://www.planetpipe.com/ (via shareaholic)

I like the National Piping Centre broadcast available here.

http://www.evernote.com/ (via shareaholic)

Anybody using this application?

This was originally posted almost six years ago now, but it was just pointed out to me by a friend over Christmas, so I am pleased to share it with any of you who hadn't already encountered it:

Last night when I went to bed I had athelas in my mouth and now there’s athelas in my hair and when I got up I tripped over my sheath and by mistake I dropped my razor into the sink while the water was running and I had to go to the Council of Elrond with stubble and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Enjoy!

From the World Day of Peace address of Pope Benedict XVI:

Respect for creation is of immense consequence, not least because “creation is the beginning and the foundation of all God’s works,” and its preservation has now become essential for the pacific coexistence of mankind. Man’s inhumanity to man has given rise to numerous threats to peace and to authentic and integral human development -- wars, international and regional conflicts, acts of terrorism, and violations of human rights. Yet no less troubling are the threats arising from the neglect -- if not downright misuse -- of the earth and the natural goods that God has given us. For this reason, it is imperative that mankind renew and strengthen “that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying.”

Amen. Full text here.