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And her head has no room
In which I pay for all of yesterday's grinning. There's karmic balance; there really is. I have a migraine, but there is a greater problem: my iTunes library has eaten itself. No music. I'm not quite sure how this happened, and it puzzles me greatly, but I think my computer and I are both heading for the doctor's in the near future.*
On the bright side, the ever-impressive![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eredien has created livejournal icons from The Cuckoo, so that I now have a terrific icon of Psholtii looking pretty much the way I feel right now. I need a paid account just so I can support my growing icon habit.
Also, since I got into an offline argument about Keats yesterday, am I wrong? Are there reasons I should really like him? I'll give him "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," because I have a soft spot for demon lovers a mile wide, but otherwise I'm mostly left wanting to read Matthew Arnold or Swinburne or any other Romantic but Wordsworth. Distract me. Please.
*I didn't mention before that a few days ago, my mail program also cannibalized one of its own folders, and I lost pretty much all of my writing-related correspondence since 2003. This was not such a disaster, since I'm obsessive and paranoid when it comes to certain areas of my life, and so I had most of the files backed up. I don't think there's anyone's address I lost that I couldn't get back one way or another, and important things like contracts and acceptances and edits are all recorded elsewhere. But I really, really don't want my laptop to crash and take something actually vital with it, say, this lecture I'm working on for Wednesday, or all of my finalized stories since 1999, so . . .
On the bright side, the ever-impressive
eredien has created livejournal icons from The Cuckoo, so that I now have a terrific icon of Psholtii looking pretty much the way I feel right now. I need a paid account just so I can support my growing icon habit.Also, since I got into an offline argument about Keats yesterday, am I wrong? Are there reasons I should really like him? I'll give him "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," because I have a soft spot for demon lovers a mile wide, but otherwise I'm mostly left wanting to read Matthew Arnold or Swinburne or any other Romantic but Wordsworth. Distract me. Please.
*I didn't mention before that a few days ago, my mail program also cannibalized one of its own folders, and I lost pretty much all of my writing-related correspondence since 2003. This was not such a disaster, since I'm obsessive and paranoid when it comes to certain areas of my life, and so I had most of the files backed up. I don't think there's anyone's address I lost that I couldn't get back one way or another, and important things like contracts and acceptances and edits are all recorded elsewhere. But I really, really don't want my laptop to crash and take something actually vital with it, say, this lecture I'm working on for Wednesday, or all of my finalized stories since 1999, so . . .
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Have you looked in the underworld for the files?
Nine
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If the files were in the underworld, I wouldn't be so worried about them! I can handle the underworld! It's any use of the computer more complicated than type-and-play-music that troubles me . . .
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As for Keats: "This Living Hand"!!! Also, his letters are very wonderful.
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(They're the new PowerBook line. On Intel processors. Running 4.5x faster than the prior generation. Also with bigger hard drives. *drool*)
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Here's a distraction. My mother was/is literally obsessed with Rod McKuen. Um. So, she bought my daughter every book of his ever published, I think, and I've been reading a few of them here and there. Who is this guy anyway?
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Sadly, I have zero idea. I even checked on amazon.com to see if I had read one of his books when younger and simply never recognized the name: and I hadn't. Does your daughter like his books? (Do you?)
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But I was wondering if this was another example of my extreme ignorance, as in he might be a world-class poet and here I am thinking his stuff is horrid. :D
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Ah, well. That would explain my mother's interest. Poor thing has awful taste. :)
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I feel much better now. I haven't found a single virture in what I've read, and I really don't think I can stomach another line. :)
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I am looking forward to that, if only because it has the best trailer I've seen in years: hooks your interest and gives away nothing of the plot. I'm assuming there will be a mermaid or a nereid or something appropriately myth-aquatic in the swimming pool, but I know no more than that (and I could always be wrong). And I did really like The Sixth Sense; it's one of the few instances where a twist-ended film holds up even without the twist.
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Dead, John Keats? In filthy Roman room.
Your glib sad shade may gibber at the Styx.
You coughed your guts up. Dead, at twenty six.
Your wasted body rots in pagan tomb.
Verse, John Keats? You rarely spoke of doom,
Used your descriptions and stylistic tricks
To clutch a moment when some happy mix
Holds you forever safe and warm, a womb.
But have the peace you sought, rest whole and blessed.
The sparks you struck are true, some of your rhyme
Returns to mind and will not be suppressed,
Comes on and back like waves, becomes sublime.
When all is weighed and said, you did your best
To praise a world that would not give you time.
And you have read Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, haven't you?
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(Thanks for the angry Keats poem. I like.)
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very fast look at your problem
Assuming you haven't had problems until now:
A. Consider updating to 10.4. I know, I know, $. This is most likely to solve everything without further tears. Install the disks and then run Software Update to pick up any maintenance and security releases, which will put you at 10.4.3.
Later 10.3 versions have well-known instabilities, and successive versions, though they correct known problems, introduce new ones. I updated my G3/900 to 10.3.5 and began seeing crashes and strange Finder behavior, which indicated a fundamental problem: files vanished, stuff wouldn't open, or would open and close instantly, etc. I replaced 10.3 with 10.4 and have not had a crash since (has been up continuously).
Install MS Office when you have updated. Versions 10 and 11 seem to be equally compatible with 10.4.
"Losing" files, in other words not "seeing" them in listings, does not mean they are overwritten. It can mean a directory is slightly screwed up.
Unix is robust, but programmers are not foolproof.
1. Your system could have become corrupted. Make a complete backup of applications and reinstall only the vanilla system from your original disks. Run software update. Reboot. Put some files back on and start shoving data around to see what happens. Reinstall Office from scratch, do not write it over from your backup. Just move your personal directory, if at all possible, which should contain all of your documents, photos, and music files. The beauty of the way the directory system works is that if you do keep all your personal files in a directory and do not scatter them into, say, the Applications folder, you have a far easier time backing up. Your mail, for example, can live in a folder in your personal directory.
Forgive me lecturing if you know this, a lot of people don't, and some older Mac programs will still store, say, your mail and its attachments, in the application folder by default.
The best response to "system corrupted" is still A, install 10.4.
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If the problem begins again after a clean system and software install, the next possibilities are:
2. Your hardware is corrupted.
2A. Worst case. Your disk might be bad. Use the Disk Utility functions to test it.
Bad disks are far rarer than they used to be, but not unknown.
If your disk tests bad: You have backups. You will need to get a new disk. You can use an external disk (my preferred backup mode) to toddle along until you can afford to/take time to get this. If you are still under warranty/Applecare, Apple owes you a new disk. (They may fuck your computer up putting it in, but I do not recommend that you try this yourself unless you are experienced in playing Operation and in taking apart interesting fiddly bits of computers.) Absolutely have backups, backups, and more backups before sending it off to Apple. If your disk tests bad and you do not have warranty/Applecare coverage, buy a new computer.
2B. Very worst case. Something on your board is bad. I had a lemon 700 that had a bad processor---and apparently 90% of 700s had a bad processor. It subtly, slowly corrupted everything running through it, in an iterative process, until the file broke. I had weird bugs like dictionary entries disappearing, files vanishing, crashes without end. It took more than a year for Apple to admit this was unacceptable. They did send a new computer after breaking, successively, the latch, the Airport antenna, the screen... all whilst trying to fix CPU that was bad by replacing the disk, the motherboard, etc. Went through three motherboards. All bad.
A bad chip is nearly impossible to detect with standard testing utilities, and no one does component-level repairs.
So, if the other stuff does not work, buy a new computer. Seriously. Use it while you badger Apple to fix the old one. Apple will not provide a loaner. Buy a refurb from them; they're cheaper than new and better-tested, so more likely to be solid. Sell it if/when you get your computer back in working order. I'm quite serious. I assume this is a tool you need every day.
If you still have Applecare/warranty coverage, you can call Apple and spend some time with their tech support people. Keep copious notes of anything, however trivial, they say to you; note down any tests they have you do and the results. This can save time if you have to call again and they try to run you through the same hoops.
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Re: exceeded comment length, sorry, here's the rest
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But really, I think I like him mostly for his influence on his contemporaries and on later poets. Shelley, now, Shelley can make me cry.
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The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains
eat with their burning cold into my bones.
Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips
his beak in poison not his own, tears up
my heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
the ghastly people of the realm of dream,
mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
to wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
when the rocks split and close again behind:
while from their loud abysses howling throng
the genii of the storm, urging the rage
of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
And yet to me welcome is day and night.
(There should be an accent in winged for the scansion, but I have no idea how to make that display.)
That passage was selected from the play by putting my finger down at random.
Or from his partial translation of Goethe's Faust, and this one was not at random because it's one of my favorite passages:
Mephistopheles (to Faustus):
Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag.
Beware! for if with them thou warrest
in their fierce flight towards the wilderness
their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag
thy body to a grave in the abyss.
A cloud thickens the night.
Hark! How the tempest crashes through the forest!
The owls fly out in strange affright;
the columns of the evergreen palaces
are split and shattered;
the roots creak, and stretch, and groan;
and ruinously overthrown,
the trunks are crushed and shattered
by the fierce blast's unconquerable stress.
Over each other crack and crash they all
in terrible and intertangled fall:
and through the ruins of the shaken mountain
the airs hiss and howl--
it is not the voice of the fountain,
nor the wolf in his midnight prowl.
Dost thou not hear?
Strange accents are ringing
aloft, afar, anear?
The witches are singing!
Sorry to totally spam your journal with Shelley, but I hope I've made my point at least somewhat.
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I really like the Faustus.
footnote
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When he's off, tho', his poems are, well, just overwritten. His advice (to the older Shelley no less) of loading every rift of poetry with ore is bad, and it shows in his lesser works.
---L.
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But...Arnold???
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