The benefit of a low-key blog such as this is that no one seems to care that I struggle to post at least twice a year, because nobody really reads it to begin with. And since the WordPress account costs nothing, I'm free to leave it alone, collecting dust, until the urge to clean it up and try again takes hold of me. My plan, then, is this: I intend to make thrice-weekly postings (at minimum) to this blog until the end of December 2008. After that, I will decide where I stand, and whether or not I have any real interest in keeping this up as a going concern. By then, I hope I will have a better idea of whether or not my writing serves as a catharsis for me, and if it matters to me that I don't have any regular readers (assuming that remains true through December). So consider this a rebirth, of sorts. A blog of the living dead, if you will.

And on the subject of rebirth and ghouls, I will awkwardly segue into the other thing I wanted to talk about today. In the past few weeks, I've gotten back into reading my collections of the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft. I don't have much to say about Lovecraft himself that others haven't already said at great length: he's probably the progenitor of the modern horror story, and the cosmology and (anti-)mythology he constructed through two decades of short stories continues on through the work of those he inspired. I just finished rereading my favorite of his stories, The Shadow Out of Time, and it manages to cram in as many ideas in its 100 pages than many books five times as long ever manage. It's getting a bit late to plan a Halloween costume, but I'm seriously considering putting together a quick-and-dirty Great Race of Yith outfit. Or a flying polyp. The only problem is, I'd have to explain it to most people before they'd understand it. Frankenstein never had that problem....

For those unfamiliar with the story, the Great Race originally hailed from a long-lost and forgotten planet from aeons before the creation of the earth. When their home planet began to wither and die, they used their immense psychic powers to cast their minds out to our world, taking refuge en masse in the brains of a race of "tall and cone-shaped" beings, "rising to a point with four strange appendages – two terminating in claws, a third in a 'trumpet,' and the fourth, a yellow globe which functioned as a sensory organ" that evolved during the early Triassic period. From these new bodies, the Yithians constructed vast cities and began to study the past, present, and future of their new home. They did this by projecting their minds forward in time, temporarily swapping consciousnesses with humans (and other intelligent beings) from various points in history. Eventually, the Great Race were driven away by their enemies, a race of interstellar parasites resembling flying polyps. They destroyed almost all evidence of their civilization and cast their minds forward into a race of human-sized, sentient beetles that evolved on the earth long after the extinction of humanity.

"The Shadow Out of Time" tells the tale of Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, a professor of economics at Lovecraft's fictional Miskatonic University, who loses five years of his life when his mind is supplanted by a member of the Great Race. After returning to his own body, Peaslee slowly begins to piece together fragmented memories of his time as a guest and prisoner in the Great Race's capital city of Pnakotus, and comes to term with the insignificance of himself and humanity against the backdrop of the interstellar struggles of the Yith and their adversaries. It's one of Lovecraft's few stories to seriously explore how a man copes with the realization of his own insignificance, and it features one of the most compelling narratives of insanity and depression Lovecraft ever put to paper. Plus, y'know, it repeatedly refers to "flying polyps," which (call me juvenile if you must) always makes me giggle.

I went drinking along the canal with Chris tonight. Le Point Ephémère was closed and the quai deserted, but we met a lonely, courteous pothead keen to share some of that pegleg shit (i.e., makes you feel like you have pegs for legs). A discerning rap fan, he expressed his love for Cypress Hill, Busta Rhymes, Wu-Tang and Eminem before identifying the pinnacle of French rap as N.T.M. (circa 1993, of course, which is at least as cool as saying your favorite Fall album is Shift-Work).

To test his caliber, I hollered out: 'Mais vous êtes fou!'

He responded, with astonishment: 'Oughh oui! ... C'est un grand classique, ça.'

Ough oui.

Sometimes, do you feel like e-mail has taken over your day and it's hard to accomplish anything? I used to feel that way until I decided to designate 3-4 times during the day to check e-mail. So for 30 minutes to one hour, I am completely focused on e-mail.

I go through every e-mail and decide in that moment what will happen with it. Creating folders helps to organize the e-mail. For instance, if an e-mail can be handled right then and there, I take care of it and delete it. The next e-mail might need some research before answering so I put it in my folder called "Action" and go back to it later in the day. Other folders I have are Incubate, Waiting, Reference. You get the picture.

Let me know if this tip was helpful. If you have a tip of your own, I'd love to read about it!

Let's work together.

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Second would be, I've rejoined the world of "Shattered Galaxy", an MMORTS, because I've found some who are still in the game till this day. IGN: Ferolare, Faction: Troy.

Third, I've left Friendster (again) as of today.

Fourth, I've joined Facebook as of today.

Fifth, I'll be away till Deepavali so I won't be here to update much. Guess I'll have to bid a temporary goodbye to watching CLANNAD, Gundam OO same time as Japan. Boohoo!!

Sixth, I've made one very obvious change to this blog..

Now that wasn't the plan... I didn't wake up one morning and say, "harrumpf! that's it! I'm done with blogging!" I just didn't have anything to say for a bit... or probably more accurately, I didn't want to take the time to say whatever it was I had to say... and the whole blog-posting just fell out of my routine and became one of the things I don't do anymore...

Actually, that's happened twice now. But yet here I am, giving it another go... third time's the charm, right? Maybe... For awhile, I kinda felt like blogging had become passe and even cliche... I mean, forget having time to post new material... I don't really even have time to READ all the blogs I'd like to... news-type blogs, sports blogs, friends' blogs... information overload! And then I discovered the joy of RSS...

RSS allows content to be syndicated such that it can be picked up by an aggregator, which will pull in all of the posts from blogs you want to read, effectively allowing you do all of your blog reading by visiting one simple website... Furthermore, as a Google Reader user, I can tag posts to be shared, instantly creating a pseudo-blog with a few clicks of the mouse...

... and all of this brought me around to the idea of blogging once again. Now I don't need to write something a few times a week to keep people coming back... I can tag a few interesting posts in the reader and have 'em pop up in the embedded RSS feed on my site (on the sidebar) instead... I've also become something of an amateur photographer in the last year or so... my flickr site has its own RSS feed... and then maybe sometimes I'll get some time and inspiration, and I'll sit down and write something myself...

Fundamentally, the new Corsairs' Affairs is three blogs in one: my own words posted here, the thoughts and ideas of others from my shared posts page, and the pictures that I take... on any given day, there may be nothing in any one of these three, but I think that there will be something new in at least one fairly often... and with RSS feeds from the two external sites in the sidebar here, you have access to the complete Corsairs' Affairs experience all right here...

... or you could go ahead and add all three feeds to your very own RSS reader... that way, you don't have to keep coming back to see if I've done anything new... and for a flaky-ass blogger like myself, that can only be a good thing, no?

Zazzle is really fun because it lets you customize your clothing to be exactly what you want. You can change the t-shirt type, size, color, and even the design (i.e. font, color, text, logo).

So feel free to play around and customize your shirt. I promise I won't get mad. ;-)

Just a sample

Writers

If you are a good researcher, writer, and editor, Stop BSL can use your talents to produce and maintain static pages. This would involve generating new content and occasionally reviewing and updating old content within the static pages only (not daily posts).

There are a number of planned static pages that need well-researched, well-written content, such as a page that describes the highlights and flaws of various BSL-related scientific studies. As with all content generation, this will require a lot of work all at once, and after that point it can be left alone, for the most part.

Additionally, the pages that already exist will need to be reviewed and updated from time to time to ensure accuracy. This does not need to be done frequently and in most cases will not require extra research or large amounts of new content.

Writers need to be able to do the following:

• Thoroughly research a topic with an open mind.
• Support one's argument with facts and citations.
• Evaluate the credibility of a source and be willing to discard any source that does not seem reliable.
• Write clearly and concisely. The writing style and tone for Stop BSL is not strictly formal, but it is authoritative.
• Copyedit.

Non-Writers

If you can copy and paste text, you can help with daily posts. Stop BSL would like to start posting BSL alerts and BSL-related news on a regular basis.

Non-writers monitor BSL Alert mailing lists, news alerts, and websites for proposed BSL and BSL-related news articles. They then post the article and appropriate links on the Stop BSL site. It doesn't require any creative writing; just copy the source article and paste it into the post box.

This volunteer position requires dedication, awareness of current events, and a willingness to participate frequently.

Note for Both Writers and Non-Writers

In keeping with the goals and values of Stop BSL, and for the sake of consistency and quality of the site, I would like to work very closely with volunteers to make sure material is appropriate and well-written. I will produce guidelines for volunteers to use when writing pages or gathering info for posts.

Familiarity with Wordpress or other blog is a big plus but is not necessary. In fact, if you're a bit intimidated by the idea of working on a website, let me assure you that this requires absolutely NO knowledge of HTML or any sort of computer coding. It is a very easy system to learn, and I am happy to help you get started; before long, you'll be posting like a pro.

Your assistance will be invaluable for site visitors to get the information they need. There is great power in numbers.

If this sounds like a project you would like to be involved with, please send me an email at stopbsl.com@gmail.com.

First and foremost, thanks to all of you for your kind words and support throughout the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.  Houston Ballet was largely spared, with only one large tree down at the studios on West Gray and a leak here and there at Wortham Theater Center.  All of our dancers and staff are doing great and have a renewed appreciation for their electricity!  The dancers are on vacation for one more week, then it's back to the grindstone...The Nutcracker is looming around the corner, and rehearsals have begun for Stanton's world premiere of Marie in the spring.

On the marketing and public relations front, we have tons of presentations coming up that we're very excited about.  The prestigious National Arts Marketing Project Conference is coming to Houston November 9-12, and Houston Ballet's marketing team has been asked to present three case studies featuring best-practice marketing initiatives that Houston Ballet has implemented over the last four years.  Andrew Edmonson (director of marketing and PR) and I will give presentations on a special customer retention program for first-time ticket buyers; a case study of the Ballet's marketing campaign for The Nutcracker; and a display of its television commercials, which have won numerous awards, including three gold “Addy Awards” from the Houston Advertising Federation.  You can see one of our Nutcracker TV spots here.

Also coming up on Wednesday, December 3, Houston Ballet will present a case study on its 2006 PR campaign for The Nutcracker as part of PR Day, a symposium for PR professionals organized by the Houston chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

As you can see, there's no rest for the weary. Now that we've recovered from Ike, we're thrown into another hurricane...Hurricane Nutcracker!

-Sarah

There are now some recommended books in the 'Books' page, organized according to topics. The 'Links' page is also updated with some links to the websites of certain related organizations.

I still hope to put up my first post soon. With such a wide range of subjects, I'm having a tough time deciding on how to begin! What should I write about in my first post anyway?

I'm also going to be updating the site and my blog roll.  If you see anything on the side bar or over on the links page that you know to be out of date or a blog that is no longer updated please let me know.  Also if there are any new blogs that you think I should be aware of please let me know that as well.  I'll add any sugestions to my reader and add a link if I decide they would make a good addition.

Some of our friends have gone back to playing the game and the Hubby reactivated his account on Monday.  I'm toying around with going back, but I'm not sure I'm ready for it yet.  I may wait until a friend of mine starts up again when she graduates in May, she's going to re-roll and I may level with her.  I'm seriously debating whether I want to play a Priest again.  From what I can tell the class dynamics are going to change drastically with the expansion.  I enjoyed playing Shadow a lot more than Holy but the SPriest isn't going to be quite the same anymore, although it looks like Holy Priests are going to be better able to keep up with the other healing classes.  There look to be some really cool additions to the bag 'o tricks, which was my favorite thing about the Holy Priest, a spell for any occasion.  If I decide to roll a healer it will probably be a Priest, if I decide to roll a DPS I'll probably go with a Mage or Lock...  Or I might do something alltogether different!  I just haven't decided yet!

I'll keep you guys up to date on what I decide to do and maybe I'll see you online sometime soon!

Purpose

To have a creative outlet for the things I want to talk about, and use feedback from others to better myself both personally and professionally.

Goals

• Be myself
• Be passionate about what I write
• Write at least one quality post each week
• Respond to comments as needed, but promptly
• Writing should be free of spelling and grammatical errors

Primary Subject Matter

• Software Development
• Japanese Culture
• Business and Management

In the meantime, I was basically doing the same things and having the same expectations as I had been for the last several years. My situation was essentially unchanging and it kinda felt like life was starting to pass me by while I just kinda stood there watching. I was missing those beautiful growing moments that transform you over the course of your life...

This situation was exacerbated (or perhaps more accurately, created) by a bad hip... I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that it was very bad hip... it was quite painful and interfered with basic stuff you might take for granted like walking and talking... ouch! In large part, it was this bad hip that kept me from going out, doing things and... well... having a life...

Nowadays, the hip is better... not great, not where I want it to be... but good enough that it's high time for me to get off my ass and start... having a life... To be clear, this isn't to suggest that I feel like I need to get married, have kids or whatever... Anyone who knows me certainly is aware that I'm rarely one to do things because other people are doing them. But it seems like high time to do something more than sitting around and waiting for the right moment to do... whatever I want to do... (to some extent, procrastination is as significant a bugaboo for me as the hip problems)...

Anyway, I've had occasional bouts with blogging in the past. Ideally, it's something that I'd like to do somewhat regularly. Practically speaking, however, I write very slowly (and poorly, IMO). What's more, I haven't often had subject material to write about. But now in the interest of personal progress, I'm re-evaluating everything... And In light of that, I'm giving this one more try.

Effective immediately, Corsairs' Affairs is back in business... Stay tuned for updates on me getting a life, occasional rants about pet peeves, a few recommendations to enrich your life (because I care about my audience!). the occasional bits of wisdom handed down from my lil' soapbox and an assortment of questions for the gallery. Your feedback and comments are always appreciated... Enjoy!