Reading this article on "Fruitcake Conspiracies" by Phillip Adams, I was bemused by the theory that the Port Arthur massacre was a plot by Little Johnny to have an excuse to bring in gun control laws blah blah blah read the article. But, by chain of conversation with my mother, I was also reminded of the One Nation chappie who claimed to be visited by the ghost of Harold Holt, who declaimed that he had not, in fact, committed suicide.

To which the nation had one response: who said he did? A need to have a vaguely dramatic national leader death in the absence of any assassinations allows us to remark on his Mysterious Disappearance, but really, the guy went swimming and didn't come back. Big whoop. He drowned. He didn't wash up anywhere. Mystery solved.

It also brought to my mother's mind the death of my great-grandmother, who drowned in the farm dam. This my mother only learnt about six years ago; probably the demises of our antecedents is on her mind, more yet than it is on mine, since this is the first anniversary of her mother's death.

I've been avoiding thinking about it, today. Just typing the words brings me to tears.

But I do find myself thinking about that side of the family - and how little I know about them. I know Grandmother was the second-eldest, and James was the youngest. James was the boy who went "through t'binder". He fell through the binder while they were baling hay, and came through unhurt; gave him some local celebrity for a while, and apparently used up all his luck, because he crashed and died in France in the second World War.

Been reading a lot of pre-WW2 history lately, and did a bit of WW2 itself last semester; strange to think of it in terms of something my grandparents experienced. But I know Grandad was an army captain in north Africa, and chased the Germans and Italians back through Italy at the end of the war, and saw things which gave him nightmares for the rest of his life. I've heard a few of them. It doesn't surprise me.

He and Grandmother met in Cairo, and married there; strange to think of Grandmother as a young bride in Egypt, of the stories I know of her war experiences too, to think of her as a junior WAAC officer leading her group of women, firing rifles with sharpshooter accuracy, falling in love, hearing the news of the death of her baby brother.

Living. Young and strong and riding times so hard we can't even imagine them with grace. Keeping the faith and dignity that were as much a part of her as her love and warmth. She was a true Christian, in the sense that Jesus wanted them to be; one of the most wonderful and beautiful human beings I have ever met. I'm privileged to have known her, privileged to descend from her, and still grieving to have lost her.

More referrer hit madness!

bruce dawe - katrina - not inherently funny, but I love the Google synopsis of the page for this one. "... Mind you, I hated Bruce Dawe, too, and not just because one of the two well ... generally cheerful, intermittently adorable, and I swear I want to marry Dr Katrina..."

racial heirarchy - What I like is, this person spells hierarchy wrong the same way I used to. I can see why someone would have gone for this link if they were wanting actual information, too: "... Nazism was based in very 19th-century ideas of racial heirarchy and superiority, and its hatred was focussed on the conspiracy of international Jewry. ..."

interpretations of somewhere i have never travelled - it's a love poem. Done.

etiquette writing councillors - they probably mean counsellors, actually, and, well, no, not here.

Yes, I will start with real posts again at some point.

At the moment I'm still working on my presentation of the life of Rudolf Hess. @whee.

For those intrigued by my academic pursuits: having reacquired sufficient time to do all my required work by dropping a unit, I'm working on learning the life and character of Rudolf Hess sufficiently well to presesnt him - or rather, present myself as him - at my tutorial next week. Need a speech, about ten minutes, summarising his life and viewpoints, and then to be able to answer questions.

Pam is the UberCool today, for becoming my Book Bimbo; Jen is the UberCool of the past couple of days, for being such a great audience for my R.O.D. fic.

Part five will be out today or tomorrow, I think. I'm not sure how much longer the present format can last before it has to start being longer chunks, possibly no longer in the present-tense-third-person-intimate style I'm currently using. This style only works for vignettes; it takes you too close, doesn't give you enough distance or overview to sustain as a comprehensible plot.

I'm remembering writing Path of Thorns, which was as much a technique experiment as anything else. I wrote it third person limited, in five chapters, with each chapter following a different character; but there was absolutely no omitted time in the entire story, so even character changes had to happen at a moment when the two characters were together so the perspective could be transmitted.

I rather like it, as an experiment, but I wouldn't want to write all my stories like that.

Out of vague curiosity, I looked at the reviews on several stories I posted on FanFiction.net several years ago. I found them interesting; from the person who "hated" Fire and Ice but couldn't string a coherent sentence together, to the person who said that To Die For was well-written, but they couldn't believe that Picard would ever commit suicide.

To which I can only say Dude, you're so outnumbered on the credibility of the story, because lots of people loved it (they're outnumbered 8 to 1 on ff.net reviews alone), and also, no, I don't think he's the suicide type, but when the ship gets blown up, and the captain decides to stay on it, it doesn't actually count as suicide, even if there is a "choosing death" element to it based on story angst.

Which is a lot to say on a story as short as that one. But I don't, for the record, think that To Die For was bad; of the stories I produced back then, it's one of the better ones. I wrote it because a friend of mine was nagging me to write a Picard/Crusher story, so I wrote one in which I killed Beverly in the first line and Picard in the last.

I later wrote her The Lingering Scent of Roses, which is on my website, which I wrote based on a Sappho poem she gave me to write from. It being Sappho and all, I'd wanted to write something f/f, but it was so perfect for what I wanted to write it was ridiculous, so that was it. And, hey, I got an ASC Award for it.

Right now I'm writing a vignette series for Read or Die, an anime Elizabeth gave me on Friday night. (Yes, I know that's an amazingly quick transition to a fandom, especially when it signifies my entry to anime fanfic.) It's not on the website yet; I'm posting it piece by piece on my LJ.

Referrer hits.

mental illness "too sweet" nasty - Well, when I'm being too sweet it's usually because I'm truly being nasty, admittedly, and I've had an instance or two of neural flu, so to speak, but nonetheless: ... the hell?

written by jack davis play no sugar - okay, if this person wanted anything more than some vehement diatribe against a crappy crappy play, they may not have been impressed. I also got "No Sugar Written By Jack Davis".

jen australia "and" "south africa" -cram +artificial" - not only does someone not know there search engine modifiers that well, this is another very odd one. What on earth were they looking for?

max unisfa - someone's looking for Loren.

wankwords - I'm third for this. I don't know whether I'm proud or offended.