lwood

Because the Raven post really wasn't enough to ensure my consignment to an unfashionable afterlife:


400x400

And in LJ Icon Size:

Uh.

Y'all heathen guys?

I found a thing...

THE THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE

Durham and York, 6th-12th August, 2006

Major Theme: The Fantastic in Old Norse / Icelandic
Literature

( More details here, including links. )
I'm just starting to go through these, but I think my favorite so far is: "How Elvish Were The Álfar?"

( This is probably because it has a killer paragraph like this one. )Am I going to agree with everything in here? Of course not. But passionate inquiry and discussion of ideas are what keeps heathenry--or any faith!--strong, vibrant, and alive. Some stability is necessary, of course, but not stagnation.

I seek equilibrium...and it's necessarily a dynamic state; dancing on a spearpoint.

Oh, and one more title to tease people:

Spirits Through Respiratory Passages Yes. Exactly what it sounds like.

*swoon*

Now--back to work; that paper won't write itself...

-- Lorrie

Tomorrow's Oracular Seið ritual will have an anthropology student from a local college in attendance.

She will only be allowed to use questions and answers from querents who have specifically permitted use of their question and answer, and we will be announcing her presence before we start. She didn't give us enough warning to make note of it beforehand even to our own people, grumble grumble nyar grar. My other stipulation, as usual, is wanting a copy of the paper when it's done.

The student will also be attending another ritual this week that will have none of the same people in it, so that will be a healthy contrast.

Passing anthropologists make me feel like I've reached the Big Time as a professional weirdo.

-- Lorrie

Spammers attempt to put all sorts of random words in pseudosensical phrases in order to get e-mail past filters that are getting increasingly intelligent about what spam ought to look like.

An intelligent poisoning algorithm will put together words that occur with the target address.

One of the e-lists, sadly pretty damn defunct, that I moderate is heathenbooks, in its prime a heathen reading club, which did great until a few blowhards with way too much time to type drowned out the conversation--few realise that in the walled gardens of well-managed lists, this is a real hazard.

Anyway, they got a spam today from one of these goobs that employs a reasonable Bayesian poison algorithm, because it obviously caught a love letter from Odin to Frigga, just before Ragnarok:

"Well, Beloved. Your greatest end with forces as much for self"

*grin*

-- Lorrie

And now, due to the request of absolutely nobody, but as long as I was at it, I thought I'd toss in the Younger Futhark. Aett collection is according to Sibley's twig-flinging.

Copyright Statement: Copy all you like, just give credit where it's due.

( Sleep now, right? Yay! )

Meanwhile, on badheathens, some people like their Eiwaz and Jera the other way 'round.

Done!

Someone on my friends list is gainfully employed at an answering service whose primary clients are medical professionals, and so collects many All-New Words for, well, private parts.

And yet, I bet nobody has called her to say, "Call my gynecologist, there's something wrong with my perthro!"

This is probably because her list of suspects would be rather short...

---

This brought to my attention by kenazf:

---

Meanwhile, back at the Stately Mad Science Lab, the on-campus cafe is serving as one of its specials, a:

G uacamole
B acon
L ettuce
T omato

...sandwich.

"[Co-Worker]", says I, "that's one queer sandwich."

Better not tell hauk about this new secret meaning of bacon...

-- Lorrie

Seidhjallr, the oracular seidh group attached to Hrafnar, will be performing oracular seidh at BFUU at 7:30 on 8 November, a week from yesterday. While the emphasis of this particular outing will be to speak with the beloved dead, questions of any type may be asked and answered.

BFUU is at the corner of Cedar and Bonita, in Berkeley, CA. It is a short walk from either the Downtown Berkeley or North Berkeley BART stations, and accessible by AC Transit bus routes 7, 9, 15, 43, and 52. After we're done, which will be 9:30-10:00, any who wish to may join us at a nearby cafe for a late dinner.

Hope to see some of you there!

-- Lorrie

All right, I'll bite on this one... unfortunately, the locals mostly won't be able to read or reply to this 'til Tuesday.

Did you think of any deity in particular when you met me? How about now that you know me? And why?

-- Lorrie

It had previously been brought to my attention that a user named dr_heathenscum was posting several and sundry defamatory things about the Troth in general, and Diana and I in particular, in several LJ's he'd camped specifically for this purpose. thetroth is one of them. At the time, only the two oldest posts were present; the really juicy stuff, namely several allegations about Troth practices, were in the user info of his camped LJ accounts.

That has changed, as anyone who clicks the link will plainly see.

So, let me state for the record:

( Several direct rebuttals within, irrelevant to my main point. )

My web hosting is primarily done as favors to friends.

These are the gifts I give them.

This is the hospitality I extend to them.

If you, as someone who hosts content on my site, would like that site to be hosted elsewhere because you do not approve of others who enjoy a seat in my hall, then you are, of course, free to move. I wish you the very best of luck in finding a hosting provider who you can prove hosts absolutely nothing objectionable.

As to dr_heathenscum himself... you know, in medieval Iceland, manslaughter and murder were, if not acceptable, at least something one could deal with by paying weregild, due compensation from the kin of the killer to the kin of the killed.

What got you outlawed was secret murder, where the identity of the killer was hidden.

I own up to my actions and my friends. My legal name is attached to every website I host when I have any say in the matter, and it's attached to this LiveJournal.

What about you, dr_heathenscum?

[Edit: Apparently, deleting my comments and rebutting with more of the same half-truths, slants, biases, and other forms of low demagoguery is more his style.]

-- Lorrie