Monochromatic Green Bear

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 21:52 on 26 August 2018

Years and years ago, in elementary art class, we were learning about shades of colors.

In particular, given hue, saturation, and value, no, wait, the hue, saturation, and luminosity, no, no, hue, saturation, and lightness, crap, hue, saturation, and vibrance, shit my commas are all over the place, hue, saturation, and vibrancy, huh, hue, saturation, and vibrancy, I ded, hue saturation and intensit, aw, f--- it, tints along with black paint and white paint, we could create monochromatic colors and art with them.

I chose yellow as my tint color.

Having a Story

Blog Instead of being asleep at 17:26 on 26 August 2018, kitt created this:

Having been visiting a lot with friends over the last month, I've noticed a large number of various lulls in conversations. Some of these lulls are wonderful, usually occurring when we are all in a moment of bliss while we have our first bite of some amazing dish. Others are that awkward uncomfortable silence when a story has ended and no one is able to pick up the thread of the conversation, topic, or idea. We all sit around, looking awkwardly at each other, waiting for someone to say something, tell us a story.

That "tell us a story" gets me every time.

Because here's the thing: if you don't do anything, you have no stories to tell.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Book Notes kitt decided around 20:36 on 23 August 2018 to publish this:

Internet attacks are incredibly common. Mob mentality and outrage du jour are so frequent they seem normal. They are not. They are not normal, they are not okay, they are not acceptable.

They occur with incredible frequency because we like to misinterpret, we like to take sides, we like to be outraged at someone else instead of doing the hard work of improving ourselves.

I often wonder what on this site is going to come back to bite me. Which post of mine is going to be taken out of context and held up for public scrutiny? Will it be the time I made a TSA agent cry, because that one received a number of "you shouldn't have been sexually assaulted by your government, what did you do wrong?" comments that, well, I chose not to publish, because ground rules. Maybe it'll be the part about Chris and Dana and their beliefs that gay people are second class citizens, oh, boy that incident was fun, where I was told to shut up about repeating what they said.

Regardless, it'll happen, I'm sure of it. Wouldn't it be a good thing to consider what I'll do when it happens? I think so, so I picked up this book to read.

The first part of the book had me wondering why I figured this would be a good book to read on the subject. It started out with, "Hey, look, here's what happened to me, the author," and went into something like, "huh, public shaming, it's a thing." And then I learned the story of Jonah Lehrer, which I headn't really paid much attention to at the time of its occurance. I could argue my life is better for not having been aware of Lehrer at the time, but I will admit I grew tired of the Twitter Outrage Of The Day™ many, many years ago.

Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all

Blog kitt decided around 18:52 on 23 August 2018 to publish this:

Eric had warned me a decade ago that parenting isn't what you think it is, and life will throw you those parenting lessons over and over again. This week has been a tough week, and I managed yet another one of those lessons, mainly that you often don't have the right answer, even when you should.

A few days ago, I found three dollar bills on the beach. I was amused by this, and handed them in some ratio to the boys. I didn't think much about them until today.

As we were walking out of lunch, L commented he wanted his dollar bill back. Hayden said no, he found it. I asked for the details.

L had been in the restroom. He dropped his dollar. He had lost it.

H went into the restroom after L. He found the dollar bill that L lost. Picked it up. Kept it.

L realized H found his dollar when H bragged about finding a dollar, as only after said bragging had L realized he had lost his dollar.

Fifth Season

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 20:13 on 14 August 2018

I have had this book on my shelf for over a year, and this week was the time to start reading it. I'm pretty sure it came into my awareness because the third book in the trilogy was being released and both the first and second book won the Hugo awards. So, bought, not read, until now.

The book opens with three three stories being told. The Fifth Season is a recurring but not periodic time of "catastrophic climate change." The people prepare for these upheavals, and for the most part survive them. The plot begins with a man triggering the Fifth Season to end the world.

Sometimes one thinks, "People," shakes her head, wonders if such an event might not actually be our unexpected end, if not in the same format.

Unsurprisingly, since the book won a Hugo, I liked it. The world building is great, the story telling engaging. At one point during the book, two of the storylines merged, so, unsurprising if you know me, I "skipped to the end" and determined that all three storylines merge, and was able to return to the place I left off and keep reading. There were a couple moments where I actually yelled, "No!" to a part of the story, so clearly the Reader is Invested™.

Strongly recommend this book. It's a beautiful if heart-breaking-in-moments book. I'll be reading the next one when it drops from my library hold into my checkout queue.

There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe. It is always important to include the eyes; otherwise, people will know you hate them.
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