( when my fandoms go mainstream and end up on NCIS... )

I was listening to the '60s XM radio station driving home from work, and this song started, and it was classic 1960s with all the strings and a little bit of the woodwinds and then the singer starts singing about cake. In the rain. And how it made him very sad. And the song went on like this for, like, ten minutes. It was quite possibly the most unintentionally hilarious song I've heard in a good long while. It was in fact Richard Harris singing MacArthur Park. Go, listen, enjoy.

Dear Yuletide author:

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Title: “Sunshine for Your Love”
Rating: all ages
Warnings: Somewhat spoilery for “Blink,” but I’m pretty sure most of us have seen that episode by now.
Word count: approx. 2600 words
Prompt: for pontisbright in the dw_femslash ficathon, who requested among other things Martha/anyone, era- or time-crossing shenanigans, and mentioned that she quite liked Polly. And, well, who doesn’t?
A/N: Thanks to persiflage_1 for fact-checking and knowing Martha’s MySpace blog so well!

( Read more... )

Dude, y'all should go read these stories for the ficathon, too. There's a ton of them, and all the ones I've read so far have been awesome.

So I managed to drop a box on my chest today. Which isn't nearly as cool-sounding as that time a couple years ago I stabbed myself with a sword, but the box actually hurt a lot more and gave me a bruise. And it all just goes to show this is not a profession for klutzes. Or short people.

For the record, I wish we got days off in the middle of the week more often. I got a ton done yesterday, and I got to sit out on my patio, reading Sandman comics in the sun. That was the most relaxing half-hour I've had in a long, long time.

Me: You terrify me, mother.
Mom: Oh, that's nice. I could embarrass you too. Would you like that?
Me: Was that a threat?
Mom: No, just a suggestion.

And yet, I'm still ridiculously excited at the prospect that she's going to be visiting in December and attending both my choir concerts, to both of which I have also invited co-workers and friends, providing her with ample embarrassment opportunities. And the terrible, terrible thing about being in choirs at this time of year? I am already excited about the holiday season. IT'S TOO EARLY, DAGNABBIT. Already I am looking forward to snow and hot cocoa and festive lights and family and friends I rarely get to see and presents. BAD ME. By the time Christmas actually rolls around I shall probably be entirely Scrooge-like. (Okay, so it's never a bad thing to look forward to seeing friends & family. But it's still too early!)

( SPN--'Changing Channels' )

In other news, there is no other news. Oh. Except that the Governor of Massachusetts is apparently thinking about shutting down the State Library, which is kinda not cool. I mean, you don't just toss out almost 200 years worth of something, just like that. (Though I'd like to see some other verification of this; the news I was seeing on Google all seemed to be about statewide budget cuts to library funding and nothing specific to the State Library.) I'm not even going to talk about my own state where that certain sneaking deathly fear has once again blown in amongst my colleagues due to all the revenue shortfall and expected budget cuts.

You know what? I'm sick of the shitty economy. I'm sick of blaming everything on the shitty economy. I'm especially sick of people using the shitty economy to cut cultural institutions. I'm sick of this being the norm, and I want some damned better resolutions. Now if only I could think of them.

Also, ABC has apparently pulled their online Eastwick episodes, which is just doubly shitty since that's the way I've been watching the show. Wah. Woe me. I need to get my priorities back in order. I also want to burn something in effigy. Hmph.

I have a long and highly personal relationship with Gravity. It mostly consists of Gravity throwing things at me and me telling it sweetly, "Fuck you, Gravity."

I just had a different sort of pear with my dinner tonight that I picked up at the store on a whim. It was the most boring fruit I have ever tasted. I didn't know fruit could taste boring. So it was disappointing on multiple levels.

This was also a very stupid day at work. Not finding the paperwork I needed; collections popping up in places they shouldn't or not being where they should; hauling boxes down from the fifth shelf and scraping my arms and fingers on the cardboard and the metal; the ladder catching on boxes as I shoved it down the too-narrow aisle; the stupid laptop running slowly or not at all; nothing new or unusual in all this but I just was not in the mood for it today. And then to top it all off I lost my key card. Which somebody promptly found and returned, thank goodness, but at that point I just sort of wanted to call it quits, go home, and crawl under the covers.

Actually, that still sounds like a good idea.

Title: Thick-Skinned
Author: aces
Rating: G
Warnings: um, spoilery for “Flowers for Hobbes,” but if you haven’t seen *that* ep by now…
Prompt from the hot_donuts ficathon: Bobby & or / any, cooking
Word count: approx. 1900 words
Summary: “I mean, you went from you to Super-Genius you to you again, all in a couple days. There’s bound to be some kind of existential whiplash with all that, I figure.”
A/N: Thanks to jenlev for looking this over and making some suggestions. You’re a savior as always!

( Read more... )

Oh, oh, troyswann, if only I could have put you in my pocket and brought you with me tonight! I went to see Tap Dogs, this tap dance extravaganza that completely blew my mind. The one really hot guy kinda reminded me of Ioan Grufford, and the main guy looked like he belonged in...1965 was the year I finally settled on. His style was completely different from the other five dancers; he was, like, Rat Pack smooth. It was interesting. Also, I love artistic types. "Let's look like we're welding stuff! While we're tap dancing! While this guy dances in the middle of the sparks! Awesome." The set was industrial-functional, the drummers were fantastic, and there was a bit where the only light onstage was the six flashlights the dancers were holding and turning off and on rhythmically. FREAKING AWESOME. (Also, they were sort of dancing on walls. And a ceiling. A CEILING. So cool.)

I was out of town over the weekend, I've got choir rehearsal tomorrow night and I had it last night, I had to go out of town tonight for this concert and I'm going out of town Thursday for a symposium (somebody else is driving, thank the gods). Friday my plans after work consist mostly of collapsing and dying. I'm holding out for that.

I'm sick! Just in time to go out of town this weekend for Homecoming! On a road trip in a car with three friends!

I'd better feel better by tomorrow. OR ELSE. (It's just a cold. Not swine flu. I checked the symptoms on the state health department's website. After I went to work, of course, because I'm just that thoughtful.)

So instead of going to choir tonight and singing my heart out, my plans are a) take bath, b) curl up on couch, and c) watch old Buffy episodes. And Eastwick since, hey, I'll be home tonight. I should probably also work on my DW femmeslash ficathon fic, but that shall probably depend entirely on my ability to concentrate and not hold a tissue for more than two minutes at a time. And also actually coming up with a scenario to write. Oh yeah, that.

There was a time, back in my early teenage years, when I never left the house except to go to school. I didn't want to go out in the world because everyone was looking at me.

Tonight I'm going to a play, by myself, that is sold out, and I'm going to be one out of a couple hundred people there--it's a small theatre--and I'm looking forward to being that stranger that nobody cares about. Just another face in the crowd. I've learned to love the anonymity.

Hmmm.

*

The play I'm going to see, by the way, is Evil Dead: The Musical. And last night I saw Zombieland, which was really quite good and involved the classic Road Trip trope that I probably should have expected but didn't and hey, I can get behind most any road tripping.

I really, really like running away.

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

Driving home from my aunt's house, I decided: fuck this shit, let's have some fun.

So, have Well, Did you Evah? from High Society, as sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

And you might as well have Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, from Spamalot, too.

And here, possibly the most random picspam ever in the history of random picspams:

( right here under this cut )

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this meme.

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

From The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, concerning holidaying at Barbados:

It would have seemed to observers that I was where I lay. But 'I'--that is, the conscious part of my self--had in truth abandoned the physical envelope in which it dwelt in order to worry about the future, or more specifically about the issue of whether lunches would be included in the price of the room. Two hours later, seated at a corner table in the hotel restaurant with a papaya (lunch and local taxes included), the I that had left my body on the deck chair now made another migration, quitting the island altogether to visit a troubling project scheduled for the following year.

It was as if a vital evolutionary advantage had been bestowed centuries ago on those members of the species who lived in a state of concern about what was to happen next. These ancestors might have failed to savour their experiences appropriately, but they had at least survived and shaped the character of their descendants, while their more focused siblings, at one with the moment and with the place where they stood, had met violent ends on the horns of unforeseen bison.
(pp. 22-23)

It's the unforseen bison that get me. Really, it's an excellent book, asking us to think about why we travel and what we really want when we get there and why it rarely ever quite goes the way we planned and dreamed. I'd definitely recommend reading it.

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

Youtube, you say? Oh, Youtube. You terrible thing.

Dave Allen Dalek sketch

Because Dave Allen and a Dalek NEVER GETS OLD. (This should be the Dalek meme for me, shouldn't it? I just love them cropping up unexpectedly and/or in unexpected ways.)

That said, I'm on a DW kick, so have Harry Sullivan and the Doctor skipping rope:

Right here

Because you know what? THAT NEVER GETS OLD EITHER.

(Be grateful, I could have given you "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek" instead.)

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

Since I missed yesterday, I shall CHEAT and do both days three and four in this post. (It doesn't count when it's honest cheating. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Any fic I could rec? Has probably already been recced by the fandom in question to death, since I usually come by fic via other people these days, rather than seeking it out myself. (Apparently, in college? I had a lot more time to goof off online seeking fic. Which astonishes me since I remember never having any time when I was in college.) So, a book that I like to mention every once in a while: The Shoemaker and the Tea Party by Alfred Young. I do not actually own a copy of this book, and that should probably be rectified, which is why I have just added it to my Amazon wishlist. A treatise on memory, memorialization (that is too a word), who makes history, and how we write about it. Oh, and a bit on the American Revolution too.

Other history books I'd recommend: The Refinement of America by Richard Bushman, looking at material culture and how during the colonial period Americans acquired more beautiful things and why they did it, and Gay New York by George Chauncey, which would probably be incredibly helpful if somebody wanted to, I dunno, write about Jack Harkness in New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. Just a thought. Ho-hum. I would whistle innocently here, if I could whistle.

Now, for a site recommendation, and this is probably also a CHEAT since it could possibly go with the book/fic/ebook recommendations instead: Girl Genius comics. Agatha rocks like a rocking Mad Scientist, and I kinda love it when Gil is a complete dorkface. They've been working on this comic for I dunno how many years now, so there's a lot of canon to work through, but I've honestly forgotten probably most of what happened in the early stuff and am still enjoying the hell out of the storyline currently going on.

Okay, an "actual" site I'd like to share is IDEA, which gives you sample dialects from around the world of individuals speaking English. Very cool, and very useful particularly for VA and writery things (or, okay, that's what I think of when I think to use it). Also, I just today noticed it was housed and operated by the University of Kansas, which is probably cooler than it should be.

Possibly not think, since thinking right now is kinda bad, but whatever.

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

Instead of a single picture, I shall do a tiny spam. Of DALEKS. But not the way one typically thinks of Daleks, oh no.

( Read more... )

Meme dawdling its way across my flist, which I have just spontaneously decided to do in order to GET ME TO POST ALREADY, DAMMIT:

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

So, today, a song: Lovestain, by Jose Gonzalez. This guy is awesome. Beautiful guitar, gorgeous lyrics, very haunting. The other morning on the way to work, I was listening to "Teardrop," and I was singing along to that line, "Feathers on my breath," and it was cold enough my breath was feathering, and it was pretty wicked.

There. I posted. Nothing of substance, but I'll work my way up to it.

Title: Choose Your Own Theft
Author: aces
Fandom, characters: Leverage and...a bunch of other fandoms. Ahem.
Rating, warnings: All ages; not really spoilery for anything
Word count: approx. 2500 words
Summary: A study in the power of objects. No, really.
A/N: This all started with a comment I made in lyssie’s LJ a while back. I’d say it was all her fault, but I was the one who made the comment, so.

( Read more... )

Okay, so I didn't really notice anybody saying anything last week when Larry Gelbart died. But today, the Shoebox blog informs me that both Mary Travers (from Peter, Paul, & Mary) and Henry Gibson also have died. And that? That is so not cool. Bang goes entire portions of my pre-teen and teenage years. And later. I wrote a paper on Laugh-In when I was in college. Fuck.

I liked what shoebox did in honor of Henry, though:

Today’s News in Rhyme:

My time was up,
But don’t feel gloomy.
The man upstairs
Just socked it to me.

Bugger.

The Invisible Man comm hot_donuts is hosting a ficfest and is looking for prompts. You don't have to write in order to submit prompts. DOOOO IIIIIT!

(I should go submit some myself.)

Some of my best trip-planning happens almost entirely spontaneously. Just over a week ago a friend of mine said "We should do a road trip! STAT!" And instead of hemming and hawing as I normally would I said, "Tempt me some more!" And she said, "Long weekend!" And I said, "I could fly back instead of trying to drive back!" And now this weekend, I am going to Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. I've never been to Arkansas! I was in Tennessee for approximately three hours once! I was only in NOLA for about five hours once! This is going to be awesome. And dizzyingly quick.

One of my co-workers found a manuscript of a spiritual written in 1832. "Second Great Awakening!" I cried in excitement. Apparently the son or grandson of the guy who wrote this spiritual was an atheist. "Because he grew up during the Second Great Awakening!" I cried in excitement, and our supervisor laughed. Some days, going to work really is worth it.