Yellow gingham on the bed, remember?

Dad: Can yoyu translate "mutatis mutandis"?

me: yeah, it's an idiom - meaning, roughly, changing what is to be changed, or changing what must be changed
only the necessary changes

Dad: you googled it? :D

me: nah, but i didn't translate it either
i recognized it
so i can't really take the credit
taking a crack at the grammar from scratch though, it's not a complete sentence, but then again, most things like this aren't
it's like, a clause you'd put in a sentence about something else to qualify it
(it's funny you should ask, i'm reading a novel right now about greek/latin/classics students at a college)

Dad: can you translate "I came... I saw... I made bugs" ?

Me: haha okay
hmm
i don't know the declension for insectum off the top of my head, so i'm going to assume it's... 3rd, i think
veni, vidi, feci insecta
if you literally mean bugs as in the creepy crawlies
and not 'mistakes'

Dad: thanks :)

Me: perhaps if you're making a programming language
err, programming reference

Dad: yeah

Me: what you're looking for is veni, vidi, feci errata

Dad: "bugs" would be "defects"

Me: yeah, i'd go with errata

Dad: ok!

---

ETA: ... later that same day...

I was trying to stop the Apocalypse from happening and I was on a roadtrip through the American Southwest at the time. One of the steps in the quest involved waking an ancient, Aztec-era sleeping god that took the form of an enormous lizard a la a dragon, and I kept deciphering old maps that took me to locations in the desert that had strange formations but none quite seemed to be what I was looking for.

( Then I had an epiphany and realized that they were ALL the locations of the sleeping god, which was actually the size of nearly the entire desert. )

The reason I am posting this dream is because I somehow know it was caused by watching the Supernatural episode 5.08 - "Changing Channels," which is at once the best episode of Supernatural, one of the best episodes of anything, and tragically not what the rest of Supernatural is about.  I am doing everything I can to... slightly lessen... the spread of.  .... genital herpes.  And that's a good thing.

1. Mosquitoes tried to devour me today. I shit you not; I never had much of a mosquito problem up until now, between living on the West Coast and having some kind of mosquito- and flea-repellent nasty O+ anemic blood that keeps the vampires away. Until today. relia and I had this misadventure that involved wandering around a creepy post-apocalyptic-looking Half-Life 2 landscape, and the moment I stepped onto it mosquitoes swarmed around me like loving vassals paying worship to their long-lost fucking mosquito king. Bloodsucking worship. Mostly ignored relia too. What the hell. Reacquainting self with OFF!.

2. Follow-up on Gay YA stuff, deepad did a solid post on the subject of queer YA lists, diversity-in-YA lists, and whether representation is actually good representation. Or, if you have ever felt, like me, that YA fiction is full of Sassy Gay Friend, here are a bunch of people who understand you. Also GTFO Libba Bray.

3. Gurl Goes To Africa is my new favorite Tumblr. Go follow it, you will love it unless you are, in fact, Gurl who Goes To Africa: in which case make like the aforementioned gentleman in #2 and look at your life and also your choices.

A car nearly killed me on the way home from Wawa. This is in no way relevant to the rest of my post, but it just happened and like a real American I feel the urge to tell someone about it. It slammed on the brakes in the middle of its lane going about 60 MPH and somehow I had the reflexes not just to brake, but to realize a half-second into braking that there was no way Nemo would slow in time not to hit the other car and swerve into a fucking Tokyo drift around it. Given slightly slower reflexes, that wouldn't have gone that way. This, folks, is why you drive stone cold sober -- it's not about being sober enough to work the steering wheel and stay in your lane, it's about being sober enough to save your own life before your conscious brain even realizes you're in danger. This is bumping "get Nemo's brakes checked" higher on my list of financial priorities, though.

~

So today I made relia listen to some covers of the Leonard Cohen song "I'm Your Man," because I love covers and I particularly love Leonard Cohen covers for what the covering artist brings to the song; my friend Taylor said today that Jeff Buckley, for instance, sings like he's been shot in the gut and every song is his last breath. I couldn't agree more. But though "Hallelujah" covers deserve a lengthy post of their own, "I'm Your Man" is my favorite Cohen song and it's been covered less. Incidentally, I've never seen a soundtrack usage of this song that didn't suck: even the one in Secretary, and I love Secretary.



Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man
and if you want to strike me down in anger/here I stand

Definitely the best, of course -- I think a lot of first-time listeners have a hard time appreciating the depth and expressiveness of Cohen's voice, but his voice and music are what take his lyrics from good poetry to fantastic music in general. The original "I'm Your Man" sounds like a love song from an adult man, full of restraint and somberness; the instrumentation barely exists, enough to give the words a melody; it all has a formality that makes the passion in it glow underneath, only coming close to breaking in the "Ah, the moon's too bright" bridge.



Nick Cave - I'm Your Man
but a man never got a woman back/not by begging on his knees

Okay, but this one blew me away. Rel and I differed on first impression here, but to me the jangly, ugly, unsettling backing and Nick Cave's raw, gravelly voice combined for an amazing cover of this song that didn't fall into the mistake of "trying to do a Cohen song to sound like Cohen"; there's a raw disturbingness and violent sexuality to his cover that I think is really mesmerizing. YMMV, though, I admire Nick Cave's work in general but I wouldn't casually pop it in on a road trip.



Michael Buble - I'm Your Man
if you want a driver, climb inside/or if you want to take me for a ride

Full disclosure of bias: I hate Michael Buble. I dislike him enough that I'm being purposely too lazy to put the diacritic in his name, though I'll probably get neurotic later and go back to add it, damn me. Aside from his being a favorite with douches, it's not so much a personal problem with the man as his need to cover classic songs and turn them into big-band elevator music. I think it was an interesting choice for him to pick something as out of his genre as this song, though, and for that I have to give him props for an artistic risk; it turned out horribly, of course, as he can emote about as well as William Shatner, but at least it wasn't another bombastic doo-wop cover. He's terrible for this song because he can't infuse it with any kind of emotion, and it's worst during the bridge; however, I will give him his props, he is a hell of a lounge/nightclub-style performer and his live "Feelin' Good" proves it (thanks, Rel). "I'm Your Man" should not sound like "Fever," though -- and yet it does here, exactly.

Anyway, I think a mark of interesting music is when trying to discuss it in words feels clunky and unrepresentative.

prodigy: We're good! When we got home we just vegged, ordered food in, watched more Baccano! and Durarara!! (what's with the punctuation trend these days? Panic! at the Disco and all) and Beauty & the Beast since it was on TV.

thez : How much of Baccano! and Durarara!! did you watch?!?!?*?*

prodigy : Uh, like one episode of Durarara!!!$$#@@#% and two of Baccano!!!!!!!!!?????.....

thez : You'll have to let me know if Durarara!!!¡¡¡!!! starts making sense.

prodigy : I'""""***m afraid it hasn^^^t yet but I will keep you posted,,,,.

Today I stood in Greenwich Village on Christopher Street and watched a pride parade go by days after the state of New York legalized marriage equality. If my Sniper aviators are smudged, it must be because of my shirt or something.

More fuck-a-doodle-doo. These are fuck-a-doodle-doo times, I think. Anyway, I'd like to say that the current Oglaf says it all about why Sandoval is amazing and why Ivan/Sandoval is OglafTP (Mistress watches with disinterest). And also why Sandoval is amazing. Sandoval has basically become my favorite Oglaf character, which was difficult as he had to displace the I Wish We Had A Better Name To Refer To This Woman By Than "The Lesbian Mercenary" and Mistress and Mistress's lazy hawk. Oglaf really is the best NSFW mysteriously-popped-out-of-nowhere fantasy sex comedy webcomic there is, and still would be even if it wasn't the sole tenant of that category I just made up.

Hmm what else. I had to be making this post for a reason. Oh, right, I'm tired, and I did stuff over the weekend. Namely relia and I trotted up to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to visit mindsplinters, tatterpixie, and thez, as well as their cats Serendipity and Lennon. Lennon is a small god of cats walking this earth. He is the most enormous cat I have ever seen. He is actually a pillow in cat form, or possibly just a pillow in pillow form that has fur and emits purrs. He was basically the entire raison d'etre for the visit -- uh, aside from my friends, of course, beloved friends that they are, I definitely do not love their colossal cat more, I would never do a thing like that. I would definitely never ignore them to blow raspberries on Lennon's belly five more times. That does not sound like me at all.

We went to the Greek food festival there, the Allentown farmer's market, and a cute little brunch place called Sweet Memories, so overall it was kind of a food-tastic weekend. We also found a bench with some interesting graffiti on it, highlights including "Loki is a sunflower," "Loki is a good dancer," and "Loki is a penis whisperer" -- the last of which is, like, it's not just that he gives head, it's that he gives amazing head? You know, I doubt it would suit Loki's purposes to give subpar blowjobs anyway. I'm not sure it suits anyone's purposes to give subpar blowjobs, though. It's a handy skill. Anyway, I dunno what drug user (or disaffected Discordian, as the case may be) was responsible for that, but I'm glad the gang snapped pictures for posterity.

I was also laid off last week, but as I'm in the business of silver linings I would like to point out I can now get out of bed exactly when I feel like.