Welcome to the Perch of the Cosmic Rooster!

FAQs, articles, etc.

eBooks and other geekery

Most of these links will take you off-site. Some will take you to the Cosmic Rooster’s sister site, The Text Artisan. Go ahead, click; I don’t mind.

• The OEBPS FAQ. An introduction to creating eBooks based on the Open eBook Publication Structure.
• The eBook Triangle: Identity, Appearance, Behavior
• What Is This Thing Called Structure? XML for Publishers
• In the Trenches: An Interview with Conversions Expert Damon Butler
• Flexible Design: an eBook Necessity
• A response to an April 2000 article in Linux Journal: CP4E, Including Women (or, Why More Women Aren’t Hackers).
• Yes, I too have a blog now. I call it Caveat Lector.

Academia

• My experience in graduate school.
• On the same topic: are you thinking about going to graduate school? Read my homegrown grad school guide: Straight Talk about Graduate School.
• An old project of mine: the translation I did as an undergraduate of the Baladro del sabio Merlín; that is, The Cry of Merlin the Wise.

Weddings

• Vegetarian and Vegan Wedding Receptions Mini-FAQ
• Why bridal salons shouldn’t rip tags from wedding gowns

Elfling

I keep here the welcome message for the Elvish Linguistics List, a mailing list I used to moderate that is devoted to the discussion of the invented languages of JRR Tolkien. The Elfling FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) List is also here.

I no longer run Elfling; the estimable John Cowan does. The welcome message housed here may therefore be out-of-date.

Personal odds and ends

• Who am I?
• Summary and pictures from my wedding
• Translation and interpretation of my email .sig files.
• What a Cosmic Rooster is. (I know you’re wondering.)

Who am I?

I am, in alphabetical order: agnostic, avid reader, Caucasian, carfree, childfree, female, feminist, IXTJ, married, teetotaler, RPGer, telecommuter, vegetarian. And probably a few other things that don’t leap to mind.

I am currently working for the University of Wisconsin Survey Center on a two-year data-capture project. Standard disclaimer applies: nothing I say on the Internet, most particularly from my own personal Internet account, is intended to represent the UWSC or the UW in any fashion.

My resume is kept here, if it is of interest.

About those .sigs:

He querido mas vivir en mi pequeña casa, exenta y señora, que no en sus ricos palacios, sojuzgada y cativa.

I prefer to live in my own little house, free and my own mistress, than in their rich palaces, downtrodden and wretched.

This comes from La Celestina, a Spanish play possibly by Fernando de Rojas. It is spoken by Areusa, who prefers her own free, if relatively poor, life to the rich but servile lifestyle of a wealthy woman’s maid.

Cuando me paro a contemplar mi estado
y a ver los pasos por do me ha traído
hallo, según por do anduve perdido
que a mayor mal pudiera haber llegado…

When I stop to contemplate my situation
and examine the steps that brought me here,
I find, considering where I wandered lost,
that I could have ended up far worse…

This comes from a sappy, over-mannered love sonnet by Garcilaso de la Vega. I remember well how I identified with the above stanza when I first read the sonnet, and how disappointed I was in the rest of it. With the curious turns my life has taken since then, my attitude toward the piece has only strengthened.

What’s a Cosmic Rooster, and why is this his perch?

The Cosmic Rooster comes from early medieval Christian poetry, in which the call of Christ to man is likened (in many and expansive metaphors!) to the daily crow of a rooster. A short sample (from the poem entitled by someone “Hymnus ad Galli Cantum”):

Ales diei nuntius
lucem propinquam praecinit;
nos excitator mentium
iam Cristus ad vitam vocat.

The bird, announcer of day, tells us that the light is near;
now Christ, awakener of our soul, calls us to life.

Why is a non-Christian, indeed wholly non-religious, person naming her site after Christian imagery?

Well, it so happens that I read this poem (the whole thing—goes on for several pages) while I was in college, in a class taught by Dr. C. Clifford Flanigan, a professor I love and value. It was he who came up with the rather flippant “Cosmic Rooster” to help us grasp the scope of the image.

Professor Flanigan died suddenly during my final semester of college. I hope and believe he would approve of some of the things I have on this page, and I hope this mention of him keeps his memory alive. I, for one, will never forget him.

I am also fond of the idea of a Cosmic Rooster. I have certainly needed some hefty wake-up calls in my lifetime!