I alone tempt you

Postspam the first. This is to remedy the sweetness tanisafan posted. I needed something a little rougher.
( I alone love you )

Feel free to mock me if I completely misunderstood these lyrics, but that beat just does things to me.

I think I overloaded my washing machine

Postspam the second. Ages ago artistic_sillie posted a handwriting-meme. I finally found time to pick up a pen. Before the internet I wrote a lot more. I was looking for examples of my much neater handwriting and I found the Book Of Letters my friend Oscar made me. Back in 1995 he went to Curaçao for his residency and we wrote letters back and forth about every two-three weeks. When he returned a year later, we both gave each other copies of the ones we received:) For comparison I posted two excerpts of our correspondence. Even back then I had the annoying habit of mixing English with Dutch, but most of you won't be able to read the whole thing, so I don't need to be too embarrassed about awkward stuff, I hope;)

( I said goodbye to my favorite pair of jeans today )

Ahw, I miss doing doodles to accompany my writing.

Oh, proverbial pants

I forgot to explain about the laundry in my previous post. So this is postspam the third. I think I put too much laundry in my machine: it didn't smell soapie and there was washing-powder residue on at least one of my shirts. Everything looked clean though and I hope hanging it outside will make it all nice and fresh. I'm such a crappy housewife. I need a maid.

Also: I have posted pictures of my departed jeans. I'll miss them :-(

Bookbabble: comparing Cicero and Stephen Fry

Over 2000 years ago Cicero wrote De Oratore (55 BC). In a long letter to his brother he talks about a discussion between famous public speakers (advocates). Would I have read it, if it was written today? Probably not. Most certainly not. Because the subject of 'rethoric' is not one that appeals to me. But the thought that these rules about speaking in public still apply today makes me smile.

I'm often guilty of arrogance about the time I live in and the knowledge that is available to us these days. So occasionally an old book like this has to be read, to make me realize humans have been struggling to get it right for a long time. Today's society is not necessarily the most intelligent or best constructed system that can be. It's humbling to know the same issues have been up for discussion for a long time. Whether that applies to language or other areas of interest.

That realisation was confirmed when I moved on to the book I'm reading now: Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Traveled. In this book Stephen shares his love for writing poems and offers exercises and examples to convince the reader poetry is worth the effort.

Both Stephen and Cicero emphasize the importance of structure when dealing with language. In fact they almost use the exact same words to explain this. ( Comparing excerpts and babbling extensively about both authors )

( Rating De Oratore: 7/10 )

( Rating The Ode Less Traveled: 8/10 )

If you've never heard of Stephen Fry I pity you and I urge you to try one of his novels. Any one of his books will convince you he is an awesome writer and I'm sure will make you want to read more. But if you don't know where to start I vote for 'Making History', a perfect novel about what could have happened if historical events had been different.

*off to finish The Ode Less Traveled*

Wanted: booklovers!

Now that I've managed to lure two friends into obtaining my favorite English-language book EVER, I thought I would push a little harder and try to make people read it together. Want to join us? Go to this post in bookcommunity thej2bee and sign up!

This was postspam the fifth:) Missed one?

Neuk Het Systeem. Translation: I apologize for this lenghty uncut post

Postspam the sixth. Yes, I am enjoying my long weekend, why do you ask?

I noticed a banner scrolling on top of my TV-screen on BBC 2: the cable company is going to change the frequency this week. Guess when they will do this. Go on, guess when I will have to fiddle with my TV to make sure I don't loose BBC 2. ... ... ... YES, you guessed right: this Wednesday, TORCHWOODWEDNESDAY! Please send me good vibes so I don't fuck up, I don't want to miss my weekly dose of Torchwoodgoodness.

Another decision from other PTB that makes me frown: are you aware new posts are going to be on the front-page of the new LJ-feature Explore LJ? That explains why I suddenly had two total strangers commenting to my post about Ian Tracey. I'm happy they were nice people.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am totally aware this journal is public and anyone can walk right in. I don't mind, I'm not a people person, but I am fascinated by the dynamics and consider this my experimental playground. But if I hadn't accidentally checked my 'Inbox' before marking all the messages 'read', I wouldn't even have known about this new feature. I can turn off this automatically inclusion on Explore, but how could I have done that if I wasn't aware of its existence?

You would think LJ had learned from previous responses by its users.

Don't force people to use new features, no matter how funky you think they are: OPT-IN is prefered to OPT-OUT.

Tell people BEFORE you implement new features

Ask paying customers to TRY new features

(The whole Inbox is another thing I would like to be able to turn off, it seems a bit redundant, seeing as I already have all my comments mailed to me. That's why I don't even read the messages there. I bet you can attack me on this logic, I need this to be aware of the news, right?)

In case you missed it and don't know what I'm talking about: check the news.

I'm going to leave my settings as they are for now, but I was wondering about how exactly the posts are "analyzed electronically and then placed into the areas where they best fit". I can see how my bookposts would end up in 'Culture', but not everything I post fits neatly into either Culture, Entertainment, Life, Music, News & Politics and Technology.

Also, despite my occasional use of harsh language and posts about 'sensitive' subjects, I chose not to friends-only my journal or put an adult lock on it, since censorship is something I don't need to deal with in my country (hello world!). Doesn't this feature invite people who think they might be 'protected' against certain 'filthy' posts to be confronted with stuff they can't handle?

I'm tired of thinking about this. If you feel the need to comment, feel free to do so. Next post will be a music meme and might contain inappropriate language. You have been warned;)

Final post of today: Music MEME!

Taken from xxshow_girlxx as a reward for actually getting one right.
I suck at these, hope you do better. I've added a lot of new bands to my playlist recently, thanks to the flist. I only heard some of these songs for the first time myself, but there are some golden oldies in there as well.

I took care of step 1 and 2, the rest is up to you:
Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 37 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING! (But it's your karma, so whatever;)
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!

( We was hitchhikin' down a long and lonesome road )

Good luck! This meme will be played all through February:)