ramblings of the lost and aimless

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:18:16 GMT

I got a Yuletide Madness fic! And it's Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens! The fic is here and everyone should go read it.

I would be more specific about it's awesomeness but I am far too tired and I have read far too much today. Expect a rec post sometime probably Tuesday or Wednesday with more detailed thoughts about all of the amazing fics that I've read so far.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/209750.html. There are comments there.

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:24:32 GMT

Mom and I went to go see It's Complicated, which was okay but not amazing. The pot scenes were hilarious and the guy who plays Chuck in Chuck was the absolute best part of the movie. Seriously, I'm going to have to start watching Chuck now. He was fantastically funny.

Oh, the new Robin Hood movie with Russel Crowe looks amazing. I hope it actually is.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/209527.html. There are comments there.

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:30:29 GMT

Yuletide: I don't yet have a list of recs yet, but I do have a list of bookmarks for fics that I think look interesting. The list of bookmarks is here if anyone is interested. It's full of all sorts of random stuff. I'll post a real rec list later.

Have I mentioned that I love the bookmarking feature? I'd probably love it even more if I could bookmark a fandom. That would be aces.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/209271.html. There are comments there.

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:49:28 GMT

Errr.... I broke Chrome's tab limit opening Yuletide stories. *sheepish*

Also, Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates (thought really, isn't 'Merry Christmas' implied in the word Yuletide.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/209024.html. There are comments there.

Yuletide!!!

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 07:08:32 GMT

I GOT KINKY DEATH RACE FEMSLASH!!!!!

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/208757.html. There are comments there.

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:54:00 GMT

A Pre Christmas post:

1. Work has been crazy, but I expected that. And at least crazy makes the time go by faster. I've worked every day this week, which will be good for my bank account but right now is just making my feet and legs hurt. And working so many mornings has left me really tired. I normally have trouble falling asleep the first couple of days that ak isn't here but I've practically been asleep before I actually get in bed the past two nights. I even took a two hour nap yesterday and didn't have a problem falling asleep.

Two of the managers have asked if I've filled out the form to stay on after the holidays, so I'm hoping that's a good sign. Wish me luck on having a job after the new year.

2. My mother got here three days ago and has already cleaned the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom and done the laundry. She also got the oil changed in my car, cleaned it out, and found a dry cleaner. And shoveled the driveway. And the back porch and put salt down. I think she has plans to clean my bathroom tomorrow. She doesn't particularly understand the idea of relaxing and there isn't anything for her to do here, so she cleans. Which means it's a little of a disincentive to clean before she gets here (not that we didn't anyway). After she cleans my bathroom, I'm not sure what she's going to do. The house is just not that big. It won't sustain two solid weeks of cleaning.

I guess after Christmas she can work on getting rid of the tree or something. I have no idea.

The cleaning is nice but she always has to have the tv on. And she has to have it on really loudly. It's a problem for me because the last thing that I normally want to do after a day of selling tvs is to come home and watch tv. ak and I normally only turn it on when we want to watch something specific, so the constant noise and flashing colors is irritating.

Oh, I've introduced my mom to vids and facebook and flashmobs in the last 24 hours. She doesn't have a facebook page (yet) and I'm hoping that she doesn't get any more curious because I do not want to have to deal with that.

3. I miss ak. A lot.

4. Podbang story has been posted. It's linked in the last post I wrote. I will know next year not to attempt to do the whole thing in one week, though I am glad that I offered to pinch hit for it. It was an experience and I'll try to stick to a better timetable next year.

Yuletide story is also finished and I'm pondering writing madness stories/treats once the whole prompt list goes live but having my mother here is not conducive to sitting still and writing as she always want to go places and do things. But, hey, I have internet this year, so I can actually read my story on Christmas! Fandom search has given me much to be excited about between now and then.

5. I miss ak a whole lot.

The End.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/208522.html. There are comments there.

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:16:03 GMT

Oh, hey, the amplificathon podbang fics being posted! The one I recorded it here: The Long Engagement by omg_wtf_yeah if anyone is interested in listening to it.

I might write a post about the whole process at some point but right now I have to get ready to go to work.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/208254.html. There are comments there.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:29:39 GMT

Yuletide story is done! Sadly, it is not the story that I originally stated writing that had a kick ass second paragraph but that didn't have anywhere to go after that. I might have to recycle that paragraph into something else one day.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/207905.html. There are comments there.

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:28:26 GMT

ak and I always open Christmas present early because she goes to LP for Christmas and neither of us wants to wait. And we basically know what we're getting anyway. This year, ak got me Rome on bluray (wow is the packaging awesome. Someone had a great thought there), the lego version of the Sears Tower, which won't be hard to put together, but will be a nice memento of our stay in the midwest, however long it lasts, and she's getting me a membership to the school's gym when next semester starts. And I got her beats headphones because she listened to them a couple of months ago and pronounced them beyond awesome, and Labyrinth on blu ray and I might get her something else while I'm at work tomorrow.

Right now, she's trying to figure out a way to change and keep her headphones on. It's adorable.

The Christmas cocktail party is tomorrow so I've been baking for most of the day. Right now, I have a lemon filled coconut cake that's still in pieces (I need to make icing and frost it), and cocoa shortbread cookie dough in the fridge where it will stay until after we get back from dinner. I need to bake those and make the peppermint ganache (thanks to havocthecat for the recipe). I also need to make meringues tonight. the spiced whipped cream will have to wait until tomorrow because the meringues will get soggy and melty if I put it on them tonight. I also need to make pepperoni pinwheels tonight, where I can get that into the fridge for baking tomorrow.

I think ak is going to boil chicken breasts tonight where she can make chicken salad sandwiches tomorrow and I have to make a cheese dip tomorrow and we have to go buy veggies and chips and at some point I need to make eggnog (we have so much alcohol in our house right now, 3 pints of bourbon, 12 oz. dark rum and 12 oz. peach brandy for the eggnog alone).

I'm experimenting with a drink that I'm calling a Christmas Daiquiri, but right now it's still too sweet. It involves tangerine juice, and cinnamon-clove infused simple syrup. Adding bitters helped, but I think the tangerine juice is going to get changed into orange juice and I might throw in a little lemon juice too. We'll see. It's still evolving.

Between the party and my mother getting in on Saturday, much cleaning needs to get done between now and tomorrow night.

And did I mention that I have to work tomorrow too?

Yay for Christmas!

Um.. how is Yuletide deadline only 4 days away? When did that happen? *flails*

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/207636.html. There are comments there.

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:12:37 GMT

Of all of the random last-decade-of-TV retrospectives I've seen floating around, this one at New York magazine is probably the best, even though it's saying what pretty much everyone else is say, that the 00s were a damn good time for TV. Also, I need to watch The Wire

When TV Became Art

And hey, there's even a line in it about fic as a critical response, though it kinda implies a lack of knowledge about just how long fic has been around (unless she's making some sort of implied argument about a shift in the focus/purpose of fic in the 00s, and I'm seriously going to stop analyzing what is really just a parenthetical).

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/207495.html. There are comments there.

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:52:58 GMT

I have officially started my yuletide fic! I am nowhere close to finishing it and I do not know how I'm going to get the other character in there but I shall figure it out eventually.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/207269.html. There are comments there.

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:44:33 GMT

Is it bad that my first real thought during the beginning of Criminal Minds was that Erin Strauss and Emily Prentiss are totally together and no one knows about it? Oh, CM, you have given me a new totally random ship. I love you.

The beginning was lovely but I thought the rest of it was pretty routine and predictable. It did what the show needed it to do, so there's that.

Top Chef... I was sad when Jennifer got kicked off, so I wasn't super invested in the finale. The one guy I didn't want to win ended up winning, but that often happens to me with Top Chef. Still, I really enjoyed the season and now I'm sad because we now enter the time of year where there is no Top Chef and no Project Runway and this year there will be snow and greyness to make it all the much more depressing.

I broke down and got Forza Motorsports 3 for the xbox and spent all day playing it. I mean that literally. I spent all day racing cars and found the thing that is better than any drug. When you level up, they give you a car. How can you stop playing when you know that if you win one more race, you're going to get a car? Seriously.

Oh, and this game (in which you put together ever larger blank puzzles) is incredibly addicting. It isn't difficult. It's just... addicting.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/207056.html. There are comments there.

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:58:09 GMT

This past September, when nearly all the world’s leaders were in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Platon, a staff photographer for [The New Yorker] magazine, set up a tiny studio off the floor of the General Assembly, and tried to hustle as many of them in front of his lens as possible.

This is actually really awesome, but you can't just look at the pictures, you have to listen to the audio clips too.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/206644.html. There are comments there.

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:26:22 GMT

Well, the living room is basically straight again and I've basically vacuumed. I say basically because the office kinda bleeds into the living room and the office is not at all straight and has not be vacuumed. The dvds are put away, which is always a feat because we're almost out of room in the buffet-that-we've-turned-into-an-entertainment-center yet we can't seem to stop acquiring dvds. The little cube that the blu rays live in is almost full as well. We really need to but something to replace the cube thing, though I'm looking at it and I think it could be rearranged to hold more stuff (or at least more useful and appropriate stuff).

The thing it, the buffet cum entertainment center has doors on the front where you can't really see what's in it and that makes me happy because I don't think there's anything particularly aesthetically pleasing about looking at a bunch of dvds/video games. Conversely, the cube thing is entirely open in the front. I would like to replace it with something like this bookcase with doors from ikea but ak doesn't know how she feels about having a giant red bookcase in the living room (also, there's the issue of how big the boxes are and getting it home). So we're at a bit of a stalemate about what to do. I'm not set on that bookcase, but I am set on something where we can hide the dvds/video games and show off our pottery, because we have lots of that and I foresee us collecting more in the future. It's our one we-don't-have-any-place-for-that-but-we-love-it weakness. So we end up with lots of art but still have conspicuously blank walls.

Pulling the dvds out of their cases and sticking them in binders also doesn't appeal to me. I generally like the packaging, particularly of tv series, particularly when it seems like someone put some thought into it, and you still have to find someplace for the binders. Everything might be moving toward digital downloads, but until I invest in a few tera bytes of storage where I don't have to delete anything ever again, I like having hard copies (and then there's the question of where I'm going to put those drives. I don't yet trust the cloud idea because it seems to me that whoever owns the servers has a ridiculous amount of control over your data and if they find something they don't like, they can delete it and no, I don't trust the market to keep them honest, I've read too much Benjamin Barber for that. Capitalism does not equal democracy and does not ensure legal protection contrary to its own interest. Also, fandom has made me paranoid).

Those are my woes for the moment. They aren't very important woes in the grand scheme (or even in the not grand scheme, perspective, i haz it, sorta) but there you have it.

I need to get the towels out of the dryer and I need to clean the bathroom but both of those things will wait for at least a little while.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/206398.html. There are comments there.

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:37:12 GMT

I've just finished uploading my podbang fic!!!! Woo \o/

Now, onto Yuletide and vids and cleaning and party planning and stuff.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/206309.html. There are comments there.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:32:52 GMT

I have 10 more google wave invites if anyone wants one. Comments are screened.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/205952.html. There are comments there.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:29:39 GMT

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile"
I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
Update your journal with the answers to the questions
Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

Questions from havocthecat

1. Have you ever read any of the Star Trek novels? If so, do you have a favorite book or author?
I was really into the books from probably 8th grade through 11th (ish). Actually, my first introduction to Star Trek was through the books. I picked up the DS9 pilot novelization before I started watching the series and finished it just in time for the 3rd season finale of DS9 (and then spent the summer getting hooked on it and TNG). So I kinda came to it backwards.

At the time though, I wasn't really aware of the books as separate, individual entities, so I never really paid attention to the authors. I knew they were seperate from the tv shows, but not that they were particularly separate from each other. And now I can't remember which ones I liked because it's been years since I picked one up. Mosaic and Pathways are the only two that really stick out in my mind.

2. What's your ultimate fannish pet peeve?

People who write the same damned story over and over and over again (no matter the fandom) and never try to do anything different because they get tons of comments on that one story, so they just keep writing it. Or conversely, people who keep reading that same damned story and leaving tons of comments and never bothering to try to read anything new. It all reinforces each other and just leads to more and more of the same damned thing.

3. Do you have any OTPs or favorite pairings?
I have very few OTPs (I can't think of one off of the top of my head) and tons and tons of favorite pairings. I think Top Gear might be the only show I watch on regular basis where I don't have some sort of favorite pairing. Most of the time, the more fandom becomes set in a pairing, the more I want to pull the pairing apart and put the characters with other people. I'm a bit of a contrarian by nature, and I love all of the possibilities. My lists (below), however, are actually incredibly conventional.

Current pairings that I love (though am not necessarily fannish about):
Callie/Arizona (Grey's Anatomy)
Hunt/Yang/(Teddy) They're totally my OT3 (GA)
Pike/Number One (ST:reboot)
Prentiss/Strauss (There are seriously like 3 fics for this pairing and I just adore the whole idea of it) (Criminal Minds)
Prentiss/anyone who isn't JJ (I'm just over it. It was there and now it's gone and I want people to get creative) (CM)
Addison/Sam (Private Practice)
Addison/Charlotte (PP)
Puck/anyone (I just love Puck. He's the only reason I'm watching Glee. I refuse to read the fic)
Jackie/Eleanore (Nurse Jackie)
Eleanore/anyone really (NJ)
Don/Peggy just because of the season finale (Mad Men)
Joan/her own badass self (MM)
Phyllis/Sharron (Y&R)
Jill/everyone on Y&R. No, literally, everyone. I cannot think of a pairing you could not convince me of.
Billy/Cain (Y&R)
Liz/Alex (SVU)
Brad/Nate (Generation Kill)

Pairings that I will always love and probably stop to read fic about:
CJ/Kate (The West Wing)(Though I love CJ/Danny too. I just don't feel the need to read fic about them)
Kate/Will (TWW)
CJ/Any woman who isn't Abbey (Stockard Channing is undoubtedly attractive, but Abbey just wouldn't cheat on Jed)
Kate/Any woman (TWW) (This is probably true of all of the women on TWW, actually)
Janeway/Torres (Voy)
Janeway/Weir (Voy/SGA. I'm so finally writing this for thelittlebang next year)
Weir/Any women who isn't Teyla. (I don't know why, but I was just never into Teyla)
Carter/Vala (SG1)
Picard/Crusher (totally my first OTP)
Carmen/Ivy (Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego)
Any sort of slash with historical figures (OMG I love Yuletide/LGBTfest for this), though Hamilton/Laurens is my current favorite.
Rachel Maddow/anyone who isn't a boy or Ana Marie Cox (I just don't think she's hot).
Powerful woman/equally powerful woman. Bulletproof kink is bulletproof.

I know I'm forgetting some but this list is already too long as it is.

4. Is there an era of history that you're especially fond of?
I like most of the big historical eras in a fannish sort of way (excluding the Guilded Age. I just cannot get into the Guilded Age. Most boring period of US history ever). Meaning that I want them to be a well crafted backdrop to stories about people. My interests here are pretty cliched: the American Revolution, the generic Medieval period, the generic Roman Republic. Tell me a good story and I can get interested in the period. On a more academic level, I'm absolutely fascinated by Cold War diplomacy. I'm dying to read The Hawk and The Dove (must wait for it to come out in paperback). So we'll say 1945 to the late 1970s/mid 1980s. Middle Eastern History from the same period is also an interest. And I'm fascinated by Western cultural history from the late '60s to the early '90s (hence the topic for my thesis).

5. What's your biggest fannish kerfluffle?
Oooohhh, I have no idea. I imagine that some of the femslash meta I posted caused a little kerfluffle. Generally, I try to stay out of the arguments and do lots of reading where I know what's going on. There have been some kerfluffles in some rps that I was active in, generally revolving around trying to push at the assumptions and boundaries of the game. I've learned not to get involved in any historically based rps because I'm too aware of what people assume about a time period versus what was actually going on and it just causes problems.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/205619.html. There are comments there.

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:09:30 GMT

Hey look guys! bessemerprocess wrote me a fic for Thanksgiving! It's called Of Jigsaw Puzzles and Missing Pieces and it's Yang/(Hunt)/Teddy because the three of them are totally my OT3 on Grey's Anatomy. It is a fic of awesomeness and everyone should go read it.

Also, happy Thanksgiving everyone.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/205457.html. There are comments there.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:28:55 GMT

~~I have 6 Google Wave invite free for whomever wants one. Leave me an email address. Comments are screened and the invites seem to take a couple of days to show up.~~

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/205088.html. There are comments there.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:17:21 GMT

Oh Top Gear, I'm so glad you're back. Never change. Never change.

How badly do I want Forza Motorsports 3? (as that's totally the only way I'll ever get to drive anything close to these cars)

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/204803.html. There are comments there.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:21:57 GMT

I just got back from having the battery in my car replaced. That was... fun. Though I guess I should say that the actual replacement experience wasn't terrible. That's probably the nicest, friendliest dealership I've ever been in. Sadly, I couldn't just go to autozone or someplace like that because none of the ones in town had the right battery for my car (at least not according to their online inventories). So the whole, OMG-my-car-won't-start-what-the-hell-happened-I-don't-have-the-money-for-this part really sucked but the actual replacement process was pretty painless.

ak tells me there is something going on tonight but she has given me no details and she's at the gym now.

Also, I haven't had a chance to eat yet today. Maybe ak will want to go get something when she's done. I'm going through PF Changs withdrawal.

Need to get recording my podbang fic and writing my yuletide fic and there's a Mad Men vid that I want to do. The Where The Wild Things Are vid had been postponed until the dvd comes out.

Newsweek this week: ignoring all of the controversy, the Polk biography that they review actually sounds really interesting. And those are two words that really shouldn't be in the same sentence. Polk and interesting. I think it might be a sign of the apocalypse.

And thanks to Exploring Music this past week, I now totally want emo!Rachmaninoff fic. And emo!Rachmaninoff/Tchaikovsky fic. Being a geek is so hard. Also, emo!Brahms is my favorite Brahms.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/204724.html. There are comments there.

Weekly tv wrap up

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:02:23 GMT

1. Please God let Project Runway be better next season. Also, let Lifetime switch to HD.

2. FNL: Why do you do this to me? Even having read the spoilers, that just sucked. The episode wasn't as great as some of them have been, but I'll take mediocre FNL over just about anything. And those last 5 minutes... That was so not even nice. So not nice (on so many levels). Also, I know she doesn't play football, but I want more Devon. I don't want Julie/Devon fic (sorry, Julie's just not my fav. Though I would take Devon/Trya fic). I would like more of Devon and her possible new friends. An appearance by the Mayor would also be awesome. ak wants Devon and Tim's new bff/girlfriend

3. Private Practice: I still love Charlotte but I feel like they wasted an opportunity with her past marriage. Also, Addison and Sam were so damned pretty at the end of last week's episode. What happened there and why didn't we get to see anything about it? Overall, I think the episode suffered from a slightly milder case of...

4. Grey's Anatomy's we-completely-forgot-how-to-pace-an-episode syndrome. Seriously. WTF even was that? Yay! for Owen resisting temptation because that is seriously the only relationship that I'm invested in (though I would totally be okay with Grey's deciding to push some boundaries and smushing all three of them into a relationship together). I think this was the worst episodes of Grey's I've seen in a while, maybe even the worst episode they've ever done. Also, way too early for Christmas stuff. Who screwed up the timing there? IDEK what's up with Sloan and his insta!daughter. I mean, I can see where they might go with it, but they need to give me a reason to care about her first.

5. So much Criminal Minds awesomeness. Awesomeness, even though I totally called the letter thing halfway through the episode. Emily Prentiss, you can flirt with me any time you like. And whoever put together the preview for next week did a pretty great job. I'm super excited about it (hey, a big CM episode that I might actually get to watch the same week it airs).

6. Last week's Glee. So. Much. Fail. And yet I can't look away. *sigh* One day you might be a better show. I'm not holding my breath. I haven't watched this weeks yet.

I think that's it.

In other news, I still can't quite believe Mad Men is over for the season.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/204374.html. There are comments there.

Mad Men (kinda spoilery)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:39:16 GMT

So, McCann Erickson is buying Sterling Cooper. In an effort to, um, deflect some of the bad press, or show what clever ad-men they are, or just to get people to go to their website (or something like that) they're put this little clip as the intro to their website.

I laughed so hard. Supposedly, it'll be up for the next week or “or until Matthew Weiner yells at us for doing it.” They also took some ads out Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek (according to the NY Times).

Seriously, seriously funny.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/204206.html. There are comments there.

Head desk

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:21:37 GMT

So, I didn't really pay much attention when I picked up my copy of the Star Trek blu ray (and I'm not saying that I wouldn't have bought it anyway, even in light of this) but I though this was a particularly interesting bit of marketing. In the special features listing on the back of the packaging, it say lovely things to get you to buy the dvi/blu ray. These start out in a pretty typical manner:

Over 3 Hours of Special Features
30 Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes (HD)
Nine Deleted Scenes (HD)
Featuring Young Kirk and Spock, Klingons, and more of the Green Girls (emphasis mine)

Yes, that's right folks. Star Trek: Now With More Green Girls.

I should not be surprised by this. I really shouldn't. But damn that's annoying and disheartening and just plain stupid. *sigh*

Tell me again how having Uhura in that mini-dress uniform without rank on it isn't sexist?

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/204014.html. There are comments there.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:34:32 GMT

I've gotten my yuletide assignment and I've got a vague idea about the story that I want to write, so that's a relief. I need to refresh myself on the source but I think I'll be okay.

Now, to eat dinner.

This entry was originally posted at http://twtd.dreamwidth.org/203775.html.

ramblings of the lost and aimless

Yuletide!!!

Weekly tv wrap up

Mad Men (kinda spoilery)

*Head desk*

Head desk