( 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.

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.

I talked to four people on the phone today. No, wait, five. I never talk to that many people on the phone. Granted, they were all friends & family, but I actually called three of them, of my own volition, and that almost never happens. Of course, the last conversation lasted exactly one minute and thirteen seconds and the majority of it consisted of

Me: *picking up phone* Yeeees?
J: Playtpuses!
Me: Playtpi?
J: Think of something else!
Me: Uh...
J: Platypee?
Me: Mooshee mooshee?

I have no idea what I'm going to do at work tomorrow. NONE. I have a single task that will probably last me at most ten minutes. Perhaps I shall wander outside and pick the wild flowers. Speaking of wild flowers

( Read more... )

with the Inspector Gadget song in my head. Whu?

Firefox users: how do I disable the auto-fill function for fields the browser recognizes? Usually I find it very helpful, but it's screwing things up at work for a lot of our staff. I didn't see anything that looked right on the Options menu, but I'm still something of a techno-peasant and could have missed it.

Shoebox blog: a bad way to waste even more time at work.

Also, I haven't seen anybody mention this about David Tennant, PBS, and Hamlet. Yay for next year?

I have reached the point at work where I am threatening to put a box on my head. An acidic one, naturally, as we have to save the acid-free ones for the records. Also, my cubicle, once pristine, now looks as if a state agency crawled in and died there. A small state agency, but one nonetheless, with really crappy acidic boxes. That I have so far refrained from putting on my head. (But it's been close.)

And finally, the meme du jour of the moment because I am BORED and avoiding doing other things: my fannish top 5 whatevers. Give me some to ponder. I shall gladly ponder.

I'm a total sucker for fic-related memes. That one about the first sentence of your past 20 fics:

( Read more... )

Speaking of Fitz, I've listened to the first two parts of "Company of Friends," with Benny and FIIIIIITZ. They were both magnificent and awesome and pretty much exactly what I would have hoped for, so I look forward to listening to the Izzy & Mary stories, since, er, I've never even thought much about them as companions.

"T," I said to my co-worker today as we were passing each other, "I have a confession to make. I think I might have killed Scully."

"I did find her lying down, stunned," T replied. "Somebody had put her up on top of E.T.'s head a while back. I left her where she is, for now; you know how it is with head injuries."

"Make sure her neck is stable," I agreed.

"I knew it must have been you," she added, "I saw you walking over there."

"And I had to tell you before you came up to me and demanded to know why I'd done it," I told her sadly. "I had to be the better woman. I'll make sure not to close the drawer so hard next time."

"I'm going to find them all lying on the ground dead one day, and I'll know it was you," she said.

"It's an earthquake zone!" I told her.

We were talking about the toys she has sitting on top of a filing cabinet I have to get into with some regularity. Also? I work in an office peopled by geeks. Okay, not surprising when they're all librarians & archivists, but the sci-fi geekiness comes out in really surprising ways. Like when one of the reference desk people was an Andorian for Halloween last year, or when the former admin assistant had the TARDIS as her screensaver. Or, y'know, E.T. is dangling Mulder upside down on top of a filing cabinet.

So, appropriately, I leave you on this note.

Poll #1421681 inquiring minds
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

Do you like cheese?

So. Those nuclear wessels.

What are *your* plans for world domination? (It's good to compare notes.)

Pie or death?

Sunday afternoons.

Oh gods, it's true, it's all true, you can't change your patterns. I went to a thing after work that the division director was holding at her house, a TGIF little get-together for staff, and I know for a fact I was the youngest person there because the third project archivist on our grant didn't show. So I sat down in one of the dining room chairs with my Fat Tire beer, and then I noticed that some of my co-workers were sitting down on the carpet, including a couple very definitely at least twenty years older than me, and I felt horrifically guilty. So then when one of my co-workers was saying she needed more crackers to go with her leftover cheese, and another one asked for more chips to go with her salsa, I sprang up to fetch it for them. Because that's what I *always* do at family get-togethers because I'm always Young Legs (as my dear Aunt June used to call me).

Actually, the thing I finally realized a couple weeks ago when I held the Family Extravaganza, and maybe it's something I would not have been old enough to realize or appreciate any earlier than now--I come from a family of know-it-alls. This explains a lot. Including why I feel like I'll never catch up.

***

I don't remember Hyvee being a particularly high-end or classy grocery store, but the one here in town--well, I think this one's run and staffed by pod people. Seriously, they're all constantly bright and cheery and enthusiastically helpful. I was wandering past the deli looking for veggie dip when I heard the man behind the counter pontificating, "If you're looking for something low in salt, than you should try this." I was in the health food section picking up veggie burgers when I found somebody restocking and talking to another customer. "We just ran a promotional thing to find out what people really wanted, so we'll be making some changes here shortly." It was unnatural. And yet, I can't stop going, it's all so shiny.

***

Pushing Daisies is over. :( I finally got around to watching the last episode last night, not really having had time before now. It was such an awesome, awesome show. I want my characters back.

If you look at it from a certain angle, under a certain light, the Man from UNCLE's episode "Foxes & Hounds Affair" could potentially be porntastic.

( Here, have some photographic proof. )


A couple random Illya shots that I might as well share because they are priceless:


( I know how you feel, mate. )


( Illya 'I broke my nail' Kuryakin, at your service. )

My aunt's 75th birthday is coming up in, oh, a week and a half. My mom and I are organizing a sort-of party for her, only neither of us do parties, so it's been an...interesting experience.

Anyway, one of my *other* aunts (I have...six now. Yes, six, only one of them I haven't seen since I was eight) is also having her birthday a couple days later, and she'll still be in town that day. So I ran to Barnes & Noble to find her a card and possibly a small gift. And I picked up one of those tiny little kit things--you know, there's the zen garden, and the slinky, and the tarot, and all those. So I picked up the four-leaf clover kit. (I know, I'm random. I'm thinking I'll look for something at work in the gift shop tomorrow. At least then it will be historic'n'shit.)

So. Two cards (I also got one for my dad for Father's Day, since I was there), this little kit, it should be about $8-10 altogether. The dude rings up my purchases, I use my aunt's B&N member discount, and the total he gives me is about $5. Okay, I think, really good discount.

No. I looked at the receipt when I got home, and he gave me the kit for free. He must have done it deliberately; I mean, how could you not notice? Maybe he was like "She's so lame she's going to give this to somebody, isn't she. It's not even worth paying for."

So, that was random.

...My mom and I are both freaking out about this party. We are ridiculous.

And because I have to share the insanity.

The Natural History Museum whale in New York twitters. Apparently, all the staff denies any of them are doing it. It's the most philosophical whale I've seen since that one that fell through the sky with the bowl of petunias. You know which whale I'm talking about. (My favorite tweet so far: In water, you can spin and twirl and dive and climb. Here, I just hang, with y'all.) (Found via the Museum Audience Insight blog, by the by.) (Also, when even a whale in a museum is twittering and I'm not? There's something wrong here.) (Also also, STOP USING THE PARENTHESES.)

Digitization is going to save civilization as we haven't known it in centuries! Or something. I...you know? I'm still ambivalent about digitization. It is awesome the stuff we can find online now and make available to researchers and blah blah blah, but this idea that it's going to make every single scrap of paper/parchment/vellum/papyrus/sheepskin/etc EVAH available is the same idea people had about microfilm, and the printing press, and other technologies in the past. I was just reading a bunch of writings by Sir frickin' Hilary Jenkinson (OMG, after reading Margaret Cross Norton a couple weeks ago, I want to shoot myself, or at least read an archivist whose writing style is not over fifty years old), and he discussed the issues with attempting to print primary sources from the medieval period. And the arguments he was making--too little time, too much money, not enough staff, never going to be able to tap fully into the huge breadth of sources available--still ring true today. Digitization might mean we can access more information than we ever could before on the document itself, and it might even make some things more efficient, but you're still dealing with historic documents that require extra care and energy, and not everybody has that kind of time and money. At my place of work, our digitization project has so far put I think about 8,000 items--individual items--on the web. Out of how many millions of pieces of paper that we have lurking about in unexpected corners? (No, actually, some of them really are lurking about in unexpected corners. It's very trying.) Not to mention the the thousands of photos and objects and other miscellaneous bits and bobs?

Um. I really hadn't planned to rant like that.

I overheard the most fabulous conversation between two birds today. It started with the weather, progressed to politics, and eventually got to sex. Oh yes. The male bird was very persuasive. The female bird fluttered. It was beautiful.

I might be making this all up. But I think not.

In other TERRIBLY EXCITING news, act_three, a comm for Fitz, now exists. I don't know why I never thought of doing something like that, considering my abiding and terrifying love for the character, so I'm glad cosmic_celery did. FIIIIIITZ. (You have to say his name that way sometimes. It just types itself out like that. Can't be helped.)

I also kinda want to sign up for a multiverse5000 prompt. Have I not killed myself enough already this year with ficathons? And it's not even June yet? *headdesks*

Actually, I really do feel sorry for the pig.

And then there's this. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the above, as it's actually about preserving electronic records, but...uh...you kinda have to see it to believe it. And then possibly see it again because I still don't believe it.

Actually, the first session I attended at that conference last week was about video preservation. It was presented by a vendor, a very well-spoken man in a lovely suit, but as he got deeper into some of the lingo and some of the issues involved in preserving it (dude, I didn't even know there was such a thing as digital betacam; this is so far out of my scope), I could just see him hanging out at work in jeans, tinkering with his stuff to make it work right. He was such a geek. It was awesome.

Okay, and I am a sheep and am on dreamwidth. So, uh, if I haven't friended you over there yet, could you find me? (I have no plans to move. I'm just, y'know, a sheep. And as Digiman would no doubt tell you, backups are always a good thing. Uh-huh.)

I get to sleep in tomorrow. I think that might be the only thing that sustained me through a lot of this week.

I saw a wild turkey today at work! Not actually in work, but outside on the trails by the creek. (I wrote creek. I did not write crick, though it was sorely tempting.) It started running away and kept looking back at me like "Oh god, she's stalking me." I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. Poor thing.

And I finally put my lawnchairs back outside this evening. So it shall no doubt rain all weekend. At least I got to sit outside and read for a few minutes tonight?

So, I wrote The Inestimable Value of a Good Pair of Shoes for paranoidangel42 for tardis_gen. HARRY. And a distinct lack of shoes. Seriously, when you get a prompt like I did, the fic writes itself. (That said, it appears I am physically incapable of writing any DW story without involving someone or something from Middle Skool Who. Excellent.)