(no subject)

So, I am reading Summerland by Michael Chabon and enjoy it immensely. It has exciting fantasy worldbuilding, and baseball, and neat magical creatures, and Norse mythology, and Coyote*, and is set in Washington.

I am about a third of the way through and I have Discussion Questions to share with you:

1) Okay, this one isn't really a discussion question but it's something I'd like to know and can't quite find on the internet, so I thought I'd ask, in case any of you know. Did Coyote invent the net? Because I know that Loki did and I know that Trickster is often associated with fishing and I'm pretty sure that I once read that Coyote invented the fish weir, but I don't know enough about Coyote to know about the net. The book says that he did, but I'm not sure if that's not another place where we're conflating Coyote and Loki.

2) The baseball thing: is there any other sport that people write stories about the Magic Of? Because, off the top of my head, I can think of several stories about the Magic Of Baseball, but I can't think of any about, say, the Magic of Soccer or Basketball or Rugby or anything like that. Is it only baseball that people write those kinds of stories about? Is it only Americans who do that?

tricksters_queen, I think you'd probably really enjoy this one.




*It does do this all-Tricksters-are-the-same-Trickster thing, which is kinda weirding me out: Coyote is called Coyote and Changer, but looks like Loki when he's human and was married to a woman named Angry Betty (heh) and sometimes turns into a raven. Loki and Coyote and Raven all feel like very different people to me.

(no subject)

In which I rant at people through fake letters:


Dear Asshole who stole our Friends of the Library donation box,

Fuck you. All the money in that box was donated by community members. Fortunately, it was emptied shortly before you stole it, so you didn't get much, but still. Fuck you.





Dear Coworker,

Perhaps if you would agree to stop making up words for things that there are perfectly good words for, I would be able to help you understand our new ILS. When you just arbitrarily decide to rename processes in that ILS into your own particular idiom, I have to attempt to translate everything you're saying. Which in turn, leads to me talking to you like you're a five-year-old because I'm gently trying to get you to use the right frelling terminology so that you can make yourself understood.

So then you go and tell me off for making you feel stupid. Protip - if you could agree to a common language, maybe I wouldn't have to talk to you like that.

PS: I do not live in your head. Maybe you should try attaching some antecedents to your pronouns once in a while.