Teyrnon

These past couple of weeks I’ve read the first three volumes of The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith published by Night Shade Books. I’m reading the Kindle editions. It’s a series of five books collecting the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith. I’ve never really heretofore gotten into his work much. I’d been given the unwieldy impression by various people that his writing was as turgid and overly florid as H.P. Lovecraft’s writing tended to be. Three volumes into the set and I’ve found that impression to be largely incorrect. Make no mistake however Smith’s prose is quite purple. Vermillion, chartreuse, saffron, and tyrian as well; the man had a proclivity for multitudinous use of obscure color words. Smith’s prose is more enjoyable than Lovecraft’s. There’s a degree of lyricism and poetry in his words that I’ve found in neither Lovecraft nor Robert E. Howard. This is probably owing to Smith’s view of himself as more a poet and an artist than a writer. I’m inclined to agree; the man truly was a poet. The vocabulary in the stories I’ve read so far has managed to send me scurrying to Google no less than once per story. Wiktionary seems to be the best reference for obscure vocabulary currently. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun reading fiction. I’m going to have to add words like mephitic and ultramundane to my own vocabulary henceforward. Not that I’d ever had much opportunity to make use of ultramundane. As a word, it’s horribly outdated despite its peculiar charm. Extraterrestrial is the word we moderns would use in its place.

The stories in these books range in genre a ways. Horror, fantasy, and science fiction are well represented. A few of them even feature space travel with references to aether as the medium to be found in deep space. I’m sure this is no surprise to you; we are talking about stories written in the 1920s and 1930s. I’m not sure quite when the final nail was applied to the coffin of the luminiferous aether. I gather it was probably during the 1950s when the space program started to gain ground. At any rate, I digress. A few of his stories fall solidly in the territory of the conte cruel. Some of those were rather chilling. His horror qua horror with supernatural beasties and such I don’t find particularly scary. The stories evocative of wonderment and the adventure of discovery I particularly enjoyed though a few of those were obviously intended to invoke a sense of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror doesn’t do much for me. I’m not discomfited or perturbed by the notion that humanity is naught but a heap of maggots crawling around and around on an insignificant ball of mud in a vast, unknowable, and ultimately uncaring cosmos. This maggot would rather concern itself with figuring out how to evolve into a dragon and take to the stars.

I haven't posted much here in 2016. When the year began I figured I would be because I thought having a Chromebox connected to the TV in the living room would make it so much more convenient and by virtue of the convenience I'd spend more time here on LJ. That obviously is not what happened. In truth what the Chromebox made more convenient is watching streaming video off the 'net in the comfort of my living room on a 32" television. It's also been wonderful for general web browsing, on-line shopping, and reading my email.

Aside from being a cesspool of ignorance, falsehoods, and bigotry Facebook has demonstrated some disturbing flaws over the years. This morning I discovered what I consider a nasty security flaw but I'm sure they think it's a feature offering terrific ease of use. I recently did a full wipe of my hard disk by zeroing it. This morning I logged into the email account that I use for Facebook. I decided to have a look at my news feed there so I clicked a link from one of the dozens emails from FB waiting for me. It went directly to my account without prompting me for a login. That's right, from a completely fresh install I got into my FB account without having to enter a password. This is absolutely frightening and should not ever happen. Email is not a secure means of communication by any stretch of the imagination. Sending a link via email that let's you bypass logging into an account on any server is incredibly irresponsible. I have half a mind to just delete my FB account right now and be done with the place.

In other news I've been watching the first few seasons of Arrow on DVD. It's been interesting. I quite enjoy the show's take on the DC Comics universe. It's a much more positive and heroic version than the recent DC related movies have given us.

This week I've installed Linux Mint 18.1/64bit on the computer I use for most things. It's a definite improvement on the Mint 16 I'd been running since the summer of 2014.



I think that's enough for one post. I'll post again soon. (I hope.)

When you don't log into Facebook daily it starts sending emails to remind you it still exists. From the last time I didn't log in to FB for awhile I know that after a few weeks it starts sending several emails a day. I really don't want my mailbox filling up with spam from Facebook again. Does anybody know how to turn that off short of deactivating/deleting the account?

This evening I remembered I purchased a pack of Christmas cards last year. I assumed it was the box on top of the bookcase in the living room so I checked when I got home. Nice cards but there were only six left in the box and other telltales in the box established a 2011 date. So, a half hour later I finally found the box I bought last year. My first thought upon looking at them was "What was I thinking?" Obviously twelve months ago I thought they were a good choice. Still, what was I thinking?!

It's not that they're horrible looking cards. It's just that I usually gravitate towards dark colors and twilight landscapes and these cards are almost a diametric opposite of that. They're really not to my usual tastes at all and I can't figure out what would have compelled me to choose this design a year ago.

You may need a new cellular phone carrier if you frequently find yourself resorting to radio jargon and the NATO phonetic alphabet to make yourself understood.

I'm thinking about removing the feedback form on my website. I'm getting nothing but spam which I have to go through on the off chance someone actually sent something that needs my attention. The majority of the spam this month, all 24 pieces if it was some clown trying to sell sunglasses. Morons! If I wanted sunglasses online I'd just go to Amazon and be done with it. I'm certainly not going to click on a link from some bozo who's filling my inbox with garbage. Particularly not the bozo who's sending me gibberish phrases repeated a gazillion times per message.

I haven't logged into Facebook at all this past week. Not even my customary once every third day. This is largely because I haven't been on the internet much this week. Now that my desktop is back online and I've checked my email other sites I check regularly I find myself disinclined to bother with Facebook. Anybody care to convince me to overcome this revulsion and check FB?

I'm also a bit bugged that FB has been filling my inbox with inane messages telling me how many notices I'm missing. Does it really need to send out emails every eight hours to remind me it exists? I've encountered despicable authoritarian cults that were less intrusive in their wheedling. This behavior does nothing to persuade me to ever login to a site that indulges in such wretched practices.

The desk chair I bought a few years ago was recalled. Apparently the weld on the base has been known to break causing the base to separate from the seat. The potential for injury is obvious. I've been sitting on the chair just about daily in the years I've had it and haven't had the weld fail yet. Though looking at it, it's plainly visible that it's not a good weld. I wasn't going to bother with the recall until someone recently reminded me that people do visit me occasionally and many of those people are heavier than I am. I'm a fairly small person. Someone closer to average adult weight or heavier might be just heavy enough to break the weld. After more thought I went ahead and took it to the nearest store and got a gift card in return for it.

I had intended to buy a new chair while I was there but upon looking at the rather meager selection of chairs they had I couldn't find one that appealed to me.  At the moment I'm sitting on a rather uncomfortable stool as I type this. It'll be a week before I can get a ride to another store to look for a new chair.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do in the meantime. I guess I won't be sitting at this console all that much. I'm still not really up to speed on the new computer and I'm still hoping I might be able to get the old one up and running again.

My lower back is starting to ache so I'm going to close here. I'll try to post something again soon.