Tablesaw!

ojouchan

twilightsyren

• Puzzle Books.I mentioned Mutant Sudoku last time, but there's a lot of other good stuff out there.
  • Nikoli Books. A few years ago, cramerica got me Penpa Mixes 1-3, which were loads of fun. They were especially useful once I dropped my nikoli.com membership. I still really love the puzzles, but having them in book form means I can forget about them easily. I'd love to see Penpa, Fillomino, Slitherlink, Masyu, Nurikabe, and Heyawake. (Obviously, they won't get here in time for Christmas, but whatever.
  • Nikoli by Sterling. Sterling Publishing puts out some real quality stuff, and recently they've been publishing Nikoli puzzles in books mixed with Sudoku. I've already got Slitherlink (which I've finished), Masyu, and Nurikabe, but I'd still like to get my hands on the other varieties listed above.
  
  
  • Crosswords. Also from Sterling, Frank Longo's Vowelless Crosswords looks good, as do Patrick Berry's Crossword masterpieces.
• Tea. Specifically looseleaf tea, not bagged/packaged. Our tea reserves are dreadfully low, and we haven't had time to restock. I like most kinds, black, green, white, oolong, herbal infusions, etc. I'd avoid Teavana and Lupicia because they're overpriced. We usually shop at specialteas.com or dragonwater.com online, and when we want something in person, we go to Wing Hop Fung in Chinatown, which stocks birdpick.com. (It looks like they have a store in Pasadena too.)
• One-Time Maid Service. Ojou and I are way behind on cleaning, and a burst of professional help would go a long way, especially now that we rarely have a full day off together.
• New Year's Eve Plans. I'm working most of the Christmas weekend, and as a result, I've got a nice five-day weekend from December 29 to January 2. Ojou's got a sexy, sexy Foxy Brown outfit to wear . . . and a lot of our friends are going to be out of town. We need something to do, something big. Scrabble with Ellen isn't going to cut it this year.

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die". Just introduce us to some new things to read.

flourish

dedalus1947_flickr_feed

whedonland

tvpassiton

evilprodigy

A 1933 report submitted to the FHA by one of its consultants, Home Hoyt, reveals the FHA's assessment of racial worth and its acknowledgment of the fluid and contingent boundaries of white identity:

If the entrance of a colored family into a white neighborhood causes a general exodus of the white people it is reflected in property values. Except in the case of Negroes and Mexicans, however,these racial and national barriers disappear when the individuals of foreign nationality groups rise in the economic scale or conform to American standards of living. . . . While the ranking may be scientifically wrong from the standpoint of inherent racial characteristics, it registers an opinion or prejudice that is reflect in land values; it is the ranking of race and nationalities with respect to the beneficial effect upon land values. Those having the most favorable effect come first on the list and those exerting the most detrimental effect appear last:

1. English, Germans, Scots, Irish, Scandinavians
2. North Italians
3. Bohemians or Czechoslovakians
4. Poles
5. Lithuanians
6. Greeks
7. Russian Jews of lower class
8. South Italians
9. Negroes
10. Mexicans

Thus, FHA officials recognized the inherent instability of ethnic hierarchies, but remained vigilant toward racial distinctions between white and nonwhite. This recognition provided a material basis for the development of an inclusive white identity predicated on suburban home ownership, and in Southern California, where the FHA maintained a most vital role in shaping regional patterns of suburban development, the settlement of places such as Orange County and the San Fernando Valley created a space where a diverse array of whites and white ethnics could "conform to American standards of living."

Segregation cut a deep swath through Los Angeles, disfiguring how residents interacted with one another and dividing areas of town, employment, recreational sites, cultural production, and even material consumption along racialized lines. Conversely, . . . local clubs, cafes, restaurants, and movie houses owned and operated by Mexican Americans or African Americans became important loci of communal interaction, where social ties could be reaffirmed and renewed in private by peoples otherwise disenfranchised from "public" Los Angeles.

"Different societies," wrote Anne Godlewska and Neil Smith, "practise different kinds of geography," and the conflicts between local youths and military men grew, in part, out of competing fictional geographies of Los Angeles. In expanding public space, the city of Los Angeles imposed its own vision of geography upon the land in erasing the past and erecting a "modern" city over the "condemned" Mexican American neighborhoods that once stood there. White naval officers stationed in the Chavez Ravine and the sailors who trained there "saw" the streets as public venues and acted upon assumptions that they were entitled to a free and open access to all of Los Angeles by virtue of their citizenship, race, class, gender, and military service. However, the local youth who patronized these same clubs, cafes, and movie theaters "saw" that same space very differently. Their places of socialization had yet to become "public" regardless of the changes around them, and they actively resisted the unwelcomed presence of outsiders, particularly those who tried to exercise assumed privileges of whiteness.

This is an alternate version of our world which is full of magic, and where America ("Columbia") was discovered empty of people but full of dangerous animals, many of them magical.

naraht

ojouchan

Since the 1930s, city planners and politicians envisioned a modern city connected by extensive roadways, with a civic center in the heart of the downtown surrounded by cultural sites that celebrated the diversity of the populace and the advancements of the arts. Yet that vision of modernity projected into the future the racialized realities of the day. The envisioned citizens who staffed and utilized that civic space, the patrons of the arts, and the consumers of local "culture" were, without question, white. City planners furthermore inscribed the growth of public space not over unused and unpopulated lands or even through neighborhoods of the white middle class. Much of the reconstruction of Los Angeles would pave over neighborhoods long occupied by predominantly Mexican American families.

Little Laura Ingalls, her sisters and their beloved Ma and Pa were illegal squatters on Osage land. She left that detail out of her 1935 children's book, Little House on the Prairie, as well as any mention of ongoing outrages—including killings, burnings, beatings, horse thefts and grave robberies—committed by white settlers, such as Charles Ingalls, against Osages living in villages not more than a mile or two away from the Ingalls' little house.

• Discoverability. Spaces do not exist unless and until they are learned of by the privileged. A continent's existence begins when it is first seen by a European. A restaurant does not exist until it's reviewed in a magazine, or on yelp.
  
• Emptiness. Once discovered, all spaces are empty until they are filled with the privileged. They can (and truly must) be modified at will and whim. They have no meaning or importance until it has been constructed by the privileged. Continents are empty until filled by Europeans. Neighborhoods are bad until filled by the rich (or at least richer).
  
• Bordelessness. Because empty spaces cannot have any meaning, there can be no barriers of access into and within the space that applies to the privileged. There are no distinctions of nations within an empty continent. There is no country into which modern Americans cannot enter and still demand the security and privilege they expect.