Just Kristin » just kristin here and now

See Kristin write. Write, Kristin, write!

justkristin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:48:29 +0000

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

The not-so-Old Bailey

justkristin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:44:39 +0000

A while back, almost near-quarter-century of Old Bailey doings were put online for historical lookie-loos like myself to peruse. As with most web-gems found, I end up forgetting about it and re-finding it, and in a fit of re-found joy, I spent a while with it the other day. I am always amused (minus the sadness of people having to hide or suffer, natch) at cases that include enough subterfuge and under-the-table dealings to make a novel, such as the case of Messrs John Bowes and Hugh Ryly, first charged with and then, after much effort, acquitted of sodomy. The type that caught my attention this time, tho, were cases of infanticide that only seemed to result in penalty if the child was a bastard, due to what was often referred to in these records as the Statute of King James. The statute seems to classify as murder either the killing of a bastard child, or the stillbirth of a child where no midwife or other assistance was called. As quoted in Murder in Shakespeare’s England
By Vanessa McMahon:

Such defences relied on a sympathetic jury to be effective. Not all juries were willing to hear extenuating circumstances, as a printed text from London in 1673 illustrated. A midwife and surgeon judged a servant girl’s infant to be stillborn:

but the law doth pronounce in such cases, by a statute of the 21th of King James, That if any child be unlawfully begotten, and be born dead, without one witness at the least, and concealing the same to hide their shame (or words to that effect) it shall be accounted as murder, so this woman being delivered of a bastard child (by her own confession), and concealing the same, the Jury found her Guilty of Murder.

Simply stated, then: a woman who gave birth unaided to a bastard, and loses it, could have — at the whim of a jury or judge — been found guilty of murder and put to death. One poor woman was denied help and turned out of her lodgings, only to give birth in the street. When the child died, she was found guilty of murder and put to death. Her case was not an isolated one, with some less sympathetic juries convicting women whose stillbirths were simply under-attended of murder. Even more curious, however, was the loophole King James opened for some women who, upon being able to prove (or fabricate proof of) a husband, were acquitted of murder, even when there was a baby’s corpse to hand. Mary Naples, for example,

was Indicted for Murthering her Male Infant , but it being proved she had a Husband, it was not comprehended in the Statute of King James, provided for the preventing lude women from Murthering their Bastard Children, so she was found not Guilty .

The case of Ann Price could have been judged either way by a modern jury, but should her attempts to get help have been proven true, hers too is an abominable case, resulting in her execution. Of course, there were also simple cases of verifiable infanticide, but without the benefit of diagnoses like post-partum depression or other mental illnesses. Here is one chilling example:

A wench was Condemn’d for murthering her Bastard-child . Being suspected by her Mistriss, and examined, she freely confess’d that she had put it into the House of Office, and that it crying, she pusht it down with a stick.

I know my fascination with all this seems odd to many, but I can’t help it. What with Old Bailey records from 1674 to 1913 freely available, and now newly added Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts for the period from 1676 to 1772, I will be able to hide in crime for a long while longer.

BEST lost dog ad ever!

justkristin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:06:02 +0000

@fablor posted a link on twitter to the lost dog ad found after the jump. It can be read, for now, on craigslist, but I had to make sure the text was saved somewhere, as it truly is the best lost dog ad I have seen in ages.

You aren’t looking for them, but I found your two dogs.
Date: 2010-02-18, 4:42PM EST

Sigh. No one is looking for these guys. And I see why. They hump everything in sight, try to dominate our old doggies, try to eat our cats and pee on everything and bark at everything. Neurotic, lick constantly. They know no commands, either in English or Spanish. They are aggressive and probably lived in a puppy mill. You dumped them, probably, and we picked them up before they were killed by traffic. Unneutered, no tags, under 1 year old small males. I hate you, person who dumped these dogs. There are no lost ads on phone poles, no lost ad on Craig’s list, no lost ad in the paper. We put signs up all over, put a found notice in at the local pounds and if you were looking for these filthy little ragamuffins, you would have found them. We are afraid to take them to the pound because under stress, your dogs were snappy and horribly afraid and dogs are judged by temperament for adoption placement. They would not have passed that test. However.….

They are, under their filth, mats and horrible habits, adorable. They have learned “Quiet,” “Come,” “Sit.” They have stopped being so neurotic and we have broken most of their bad habits in just a few days. They are smart and sweet and are looking for guidance and WANT to be good little dogs. One is a purebred little white and buff guy with an under bite, the other is a brown little dog that looks almost exactly like a miniature version of a larger breed dog. They know each other and were obviously (by the same bad habits) raised (poorly) together. We will get them neutered, train them and get them into a good, loving home with people who use the brains God gave them.

If these are your dogs, come on by, I’d like to kick your ass.

* Location: Atlanta
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1607058449

I no longer rule…

justkristin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:00:13 +0000

I got caught up in the iPhone “game” WeRule for a while, enchanted by the idea of building my own town, especially one with a Medieval theme and dragons. As a child, my brother and I would draw our own detailed island maps on graph paper, and I hoped that this “Farmville”-like app would provide a similar feeling of omnipotent creativity. It lasted longer for me than did Farmville, probably because it is not associated with the time-suck that is Facebook. (Yes, I am on facebook, partially for work, and partially to more easily keep in touch with people who live far away, but I would honestly be just as happy if everyone was on Twitter so there would be no FB app pollution in my snippet-based correspondence.) I farmed and ran my businesses, grew my holdings and watched clouds float prettily by. I even started ordering goods and services from neighboring “towns”, and fulfilling similar orders. My kingdom, at the time of its demise this afternoon, was a sizable one. Why, then, did I stop? The disillusionment came in small increments:

I had not wanted to build a lumber mill. Recycled paper goods are far superior, more readily renewable building resources like bamboo, hay-bale and rammed earth are just as readily available, and the impact of both of these on the ecosystem is lower… I was given no option for a recycling plant, however, and I would not foist my paper and wood needs onto other towns to assuage my own ecological guilt, so I built one.
I also had no desire for a butcher shop. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see the killing when it happened (such is the sterilized nature of the game). It was simply horrific enough to know that the happy little cows that roamed my screen were occasionally made into sausage! However, I am not the type to force my beliefs onto others. I prepare non-vegetarian food for my family, so I couldn’t keep my townsfolk from their kielbasa. I built a butcher shop as well.
I never had any real need for the rulers of my town to be so well-housed. Even if it were a monarchy, no ruler rules for long if their subjects see too great a disparity between themselves and the powers that be. The game left no option, however, for increasing the land holdings of my town without also adding on to the castle at its center. Here, too, I grudgingly gave in, promising to set aside whole citadel wings for hospitals and other social services.
“They” took my magic cauliflower away from me, even though I had been growing it since level 20, and announced that it would only be made available again once I’d reached level 40. This needs no explanation, really. Stealing a woman’s magic cauliflower. Really.
New expansion options were regularly added, and all were welcome until the most recent additions. Two of the four were a prison and a chopping block for capital punishment. If a butcher shop made me queasy, imagine the effects of these two celebrations of human cruelty! At the same time, ruby colored castles and ruby-fruit trees were also made available. Shocking displays of the misuse of wealth, I say! No thanks!
Finally, even if all the previous points are just me being silly, the last straw was my realization that, despite being able to enact commerce with other players, there was nothing at all truly social about this game-that-isn’t-really-a-game. I realized that I was playing solely to get more stuff, by myself, for myself: A noxious addiction to something that, while somewhat relaxing in its rudimentary attempts at fostering creativity, was a complete waste of my time. These are not values I want to nurture in myself in real life, so why do so online, when I could actually be chatting with friends or writing poetry or watching my daughter skate or walking outside or napping with my dogs?

I have, instead, pulled out an old notebook and some crayons. Anyone want to make maps with me?

Join the Diaspora. I have.

justkristin — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:36:37 +0000

Moss and PhotoDropper

justkristin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:36:28 +0000

photo credit: ecstaticist

Why? Because I love moss, and because I wanted to test the PhotoDropper plugin.

WTS?!

justkristin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:20:00 +0000

WTS?!

Originally uploaded by justkristin

I will not be able to go to K’zoo this year, but I will someday. I will, however, thanks to my friend, Jincy, be celebrating Mr. Chaucer’s newest book from my cubicle. Congratulations, Chaucer blogger, whoever you are!

Will the fans get screwed?

justkristin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:56:42 +0000

My guess is yes, but I can hope. Apple, if you are out there and listening:

Today iPhone OS4 was announced. It looks fantastic, except for the bit about 3G phones only getting some of the features, multitasking not being one of them.

iPhone OS 4 will work with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the second– and third-generation iPod touch this summer, and with iPad in the fall. Not all features are compatible with all devices. For example, multitasking is available only with iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch (32GB and 64GB models from late 2009).

Is there, then, dear Unka Steve, an early renewal/upgrade deal set up for those of us whose contracts with AT&T would only have an upgrade available in, say, October? I will get another iPhone. I will. But, jeebus, do I have to be hobbled until my regular renewal date? (Of course, my inner demon reminds me, an early renewal would mean possibly missing the new iPhone hardware — if there is some — for 2 years…)

Good lord, things get ugly when geeks get denied. :)

Immuttinations

justkristin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:07:37 +0000

Hanna is just — I mean just — squishy enough to do impersonations. Smokey does it a bit better, so I will have to get pics next time I am visiting his house. In the mean time, here she is:

I’m a greyhound!

I’m a sharpei!

Over the weekend, Smokey, Darwin and Ella tried their hands at another kind of impersonation: (Click Smokey’s chest for more pics. Click Smokey’s mom’s chest… oh, oops. *duck*)

We are Easter doggies!

Of course, Elvis is too much a baby to do much more than cuddle:

I am a babydog!

Sir Real

justkristin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:38:01 +0000

It occurred to me, as D and I drove home with bellies full of Kosher and a frozen lovebird in the back seat, that there are two kinds, or two levels of surreality. One is home to the surreal content born of your own mind, on purpose. Access to this level of creative nonsense is had when you take hikes along the perimeter of your sanity, skipping into the unmapped areas to make dew-angels in the moss, yelling secrets into the shadows past the safety of its borders and recording for posterity the garbled replies that echo back thru the trees in voices that belong to other versions of you. This surreality is the kind understood, to some degree, by the person who channels it, because it is born of them. It is their interpretation, in a way, of the fringe of their own existence. It can be humorous, and often is, much in the same way that misheard statements are often laugh-inducing, and its humor — or any other emotion it conjures — can easily be shared between artist and audience, as we all wander those same stretches sometimes, and hear those same echoes.

The other kind of surreality generates art which is more engineered than interpreted. It is a structure made by the artist out of bits and pieces found on rambles — a wolf’s ear, a stalk of wheat, a small child’s skeleton encased in the cornerstone of a building, a bile bean, a rainbow, a pubic hair in a bar of soap — and held together by the glue that is the artist’s sense. The artist may not know what she is piecing together, but judges each piece aesthetically: the essence of the thing is not in the fabrics of the patches, but in how they get stitched together. This surreality is less often humorous, as it speaks to drives more primal than humor (that is, when it is understood by its audience). If the bridge between artist and audience is made, this art can dazzle, or even bring on epiphany or euphoria. If the bridge is not made, however, the art is, to the person left searching for its entrance, at best a beautiful enigma.