welcome to camp telophase

If you were interested in the paper about an early modern doctor’s casebook that I posted asking for, let me also point you in this direction: the Cambridge Casebook Project: “In the decades around 1600, the astrologers Simon Forman and Richard Napier produced one of the largest surviving sets of medical records in history. The Casebooks Project, a team of scholars at the University of Cambridge, has transformed this paper archive into a digital archive.”

(What’s different about the guy the paper is about is that he’s not an astrologer-physician, but a more modern learned physician.)

And also in historical stuff, YouTube helpfully reminded me that Janet Stephens, the “hairstyle archaeologist” exists, by throwing my way her video of a period 1870s hairstyle done up in magenta pink for steampunk purposes. I’m fairly sure I mentioned her before, although I can’t be arsed to look it up. But while waiting for my repaired computer to arrive (it was shipped overnight...on Thursday*), I whiled away the time watching her demonstrate lots of Classical hairstyles.

*I am sympathetic to them being overwhelmed due to the pandemic. I am notsympathetic to them claiming the computer was on the truck Friday, then not attempting delivery Saturday, then claiming the thing was on the truck this morning, and delivering it at 8:50 PM, after they said the delivery window was 1-3. If they’d just SAID the damn thing was delayed, I’d not be so annoyed and panicky that it had been stolen. (See: my Wacom Companion 2 several years ago that was shipped to FLORIDA, and the terrible run-ins with Wacom’s terrible customer service, and them not giving me any response until I threatened to reverse the charge on my credit card.)

I have also got inspired to buy hair extensions because I am tired of not having hair long enough to do really nifty updos, and since it looks like we’ll be wearing masks in public for the foreseeable future, and pulling my hair into an updo reduces the amount of poking at my face I do, well, it seemed the logical next step. I sent pictures of my hair to a couple different companions for color-matching purposes, then ordered swatches, and pulled the trigger on that earlier tonight. The second set of swatches also fell victim to postal shenanigans: this time instead of UPS delivering four days late, the post office just didn’t bother to deliver on Friday, when they said the samples were on the truck, or Saturday, claiming there was an obstruction and they couldn’t get to the mailbox. (We have a video doorbell. At the time they claimed, there was nothing parked in front of it.) We’ve had delayed-delivery weirdnesses with this post office several times in the past few months, starting from before the pandemic, so I think it may just be employees scanning things as delivered so they don’t get in trouble for forgetting it or not getting to our house.

So we shall see. My hair is too thin on top to clip extensions in higher than my ears, but that’s totally fine for the purposes of twisting and braiding into various buns and such. If these work out, I shall consider investing in a set in a ridiculously fake color for the hell of it.

I know that most of you have better things to do on a Friday night than read LJ, but hey. At any rate, I dunno how many of you already know, but rachelmanija and I are working on a next thing - a 20-40 page short story to submit to an anthology, and because I didn't want to draw trenchcoats again for a while, among other things, we're doing a sort of fantasy thing that we like to refer to as Gay Tibetan Martial Artists.*

If you're interested in How It All Happened, you can read her blog entry about it here.

At any rate, I'm starting to collect images for reference and inspiration, and if any of you feel like wielding a little Google-fu, here's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Mountains. But not general pretty scenery mountains. I've got plenty of images of dramatic snow blowing off Everest and the like. What I need is photos that are a little more intimate - trekking in the mountains, mountain paths, and so on. And not really forested Apalachian-type mountians. I need dramatic, unforgiving, tough Himalayan or Andean type mountain terrain shots. Crevasses and gorges = Good. Snow = Good. Rocky terrain = Good. The sort of place where almost the only living creature is mad dogs and Englishmen mountain goats and idiotic mountaineers. I don't need dramatic long-distance scenery shots. I need to know how to draw people actually walkign on trails, so I need photos of trails and climbers on walls and stuff that are close enough to allow me to draw them. I can't do all the pages with teh images all at a distance of half a mile. If you're not sure what I mean, ask.

Tibetan, Nepali, and Bhutanese moasteries, temples, and other buildings. As well as people and clothing. If you can find some shots of the beautiful old buildings - I think it may be a temple complex - in Kathmandu, so much the better.

Images and video of someone wielding a chain whip. (It's a weapon of a rope or chain with a weight on one end - in Shanghai Knights, Jackie Chan improvises one with a length of rope and a horseshoe.) Images and video of interesting Central Asian weapons, especally ones that aren't that well-known. If anyone can find proof that the Tibetan dorje and the axe known as the Ego Chopper and other symbolic weapons were actually used as real weapons, I LOVE YOU LONG TIME FIVE DOLLAS. (Caveat: not from the lionsroar.com site. I'm trying to corroborate their info.)

I'll post as I think of other things.

* Again with the gay, because it's a yaoi/boys'love-themed market we're going to be submitting to.