Thanks to the miracle of technology, this pointless ephemera has been captured for posterity so it can be studied by archaeologists who will be very confused but hey they have flying cars so they can bite it:

• 07:09 Had a lambic beer last night. I was expecting fruity but not not KoolAid sweet... #

Blame Obs for the words and LoudTwitter for the delivery.

Well, I can kind of talk today. I'm not sure how long it'll last. I had to sleep sitting up last night, because if I lie down I start coughing like mad. So I piled up some pillows to prop myself up. Now I'm all stiff. But I can't miss Greek today because we really are doing new grammar, and then I can't miss Ancient Science because I have to croak out my presentation as best I can. Today's gonna suck.

Poll #1493330 I'm going somewhere with this, I swear
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 11

I do things that I believe to be unethical

I have violated my own system of ethics big time

To what degree do you agree with the statement: "What is ethical can usually be determined by what is legal"?

Week's half over, and to celebrate here's a wide-screen (1440x900) Elijah background made from scans of his appearance in 'H'.

Click the thumb to get to the larger image.


Take and enjoy!

Question: There is nothing about the concept of a being a Christian that makes you not a Christian if you sin. Or if you are a Democrat and you support the death penalty, it doesn't automatically make you not a Democrat. If you claim to be an environmentalist and don't always recycle, then that doesn't automatically not make you an environmentalist. So why do we hold vegetarianism/veganism to a much stricter standard than these other things. I think it's weird that there is not a classification for something who cares about animal rights and thinks eating animal products should be avoided, but that if they do eat animal products it doesn't mean they are not part of that group. I am curious as to peoples thoughts about why those dietary belief systems are so rigid.

Not a question: So far Buffy the Vampire Slayer is awful. Awful. Casey, I apologize for ever saying that the first season of Babylon 5 was bad, because I did not yet realize the depths to which it was possible to sink.

Yesterday's conversation
Me: Mr. Guy-who-works-on-the-furnace the head is making a lot of smoke. The whole back porch is full. Also it rumbles a lot when it starts, which it doesn't normally do.
Guy: Oh it's just the temperature change. If it is just while smoke and not black smoke don't worry about it.
Me: Are you sure?
Guy: Yeah it will clear up in a day or two.
Me: Ok if you say so.

Now it's 4:45 in the morning and it hasn't cut on since I went to sleep and it is freezing in the house.

full moon what? seriously? today was the first day in two weeks that i've had an opportunity to sit down, glue myself to my computer, and start catching up on some critical work that needed to be done weeks ago. so, of course, that means that today is also the day that i get the first computer virus that this computer has ever had in 5 years.

it completely disabled my ability to get on the internet. now, 10 hours later, (and with significant help from my personal guru Marc), i seem to have gotten things settled and working again. of course, i have to do a complete system backup in case i end up having to scrub and reinstall the operating system down the line, and that backup will take (as i recall) about 20 hours. which means that right about the time that i needed to have ALL of my work caught up on and finished, will be just about the time that i can actually start.

the timing of this is just too incredible. so i either blame the full moon...or voodoo.

Meme from knightless

Leave me a comment saying "I don't know, fly casual".
I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

01. What do you love so much about Tam Lin?

...That is a wonderful question. EVERYTHING.

It started out with iTunes randomly playing the Mediaeval Babes version, which is quite different from most of the other renditions. I listened to it a whole bunch, and a bit of googling found that there were more renditions.

I think the one right here was the next one I picked up. It's pretty awesome.

With some luck I ended up acquiring... a very large number of versions. Which only encouraged me.

And then Hazards of Love happened, which I stand by my opinion that it's an (extended) riff on Tam Lin.

Winning points re: Tam Lin:
- It's pretty. Sometimes. Other times it's fairly rockin' for a folk song.
- It's about faeries. (In part anways.)
- It gets stuck in my head a lot.

SEE I'm really bad at explaining why I like the things I like. ;;;

02. What color do you want to dye your hair next?

Hm. It's blonde right now. My plan was to go back to pink just because I have the dye for that. I'm sort of thinking to then phase through from there to purple and work up to blue. I've talked about blue since highschool but never quite did it. It's a pain when it starts to fade is part of the problem.

03. If you were to go to some formal event next week, what would you wear?

That is a horribly timed question, in that I have nothing appropriate to a winter formal event, or even close.

Probably my black ruffly dress, with tights and... I would either go out and aquire some sort of cardigan, or use a pashmina, or wear my pleather jacket. Depends on how formal I guess, and how cold. I don't actually own anything super formal so. If that were what the situation was I'd have to buy something.

04. You have the option to obtain a replica of any movie prop/costume piece that you want, free of charge. What is it?

Oh gosh. Uhm. That's tough.

There was a point where I'd've easily said one of the Lord of the Rings replica pieces.

I already have an awesome pirate hat, so the obvious answer there is out. Actually at one point they made a replica of Jack's Compass that sounded pretty spiffy.

If I can cheat a bit, a replica of Soul Calibur from the second game would be pretty sweet.

Or a TARDIS? Can I have a TARDIS? :Dbb

The problem I'm having here is that cool stuff is cool but I'd like something that would be both cool and that I would use. (In case you don't remember/didn't know me back then, I wore my pirate hat every day for MONTHS after buying it. OF COURSE I CAN WEAR A PIRATE HAT TO THE MALL MOM JEEZ.)

05. Tell me what first drew you to Soul Calibur.

Chance, mostly. I was killing time in an arcade in Montreal, and there was this Fighting Game. It was rather pretty. And there were swords. So I thought, hey, why not? And I played a bit, and it was fun, and then I went home to Ontario and that was that until I happened to run across it in a used game store and took it home and realized I held the power of FUCKING AWESOME in my hands.

Fuck yes I love Soul Calibur.

Artist | Title | Year : Living Ornaments | Korrels | 2009
Genre : electronic, idm
Bitrate | Size : CBR 320 | 88 mb


( tracklist + links )

For the past two years, whenever I visit my parents, I've said goodbye to our dog, Jasper. Once he hit fifteen, I figured any further time he had was limited. Now he's seventeen, this ridiculous bionic dog who somehow manages to keep on going. He even managed to pop his own dislocated hip back into place!

This time, I'm pretty sure the goodbyes are for real. He's slowly lost energy, hearing, and sight over the years, but he was still Jasper: exploring the neighborhood whenever the front door blew open, doing cute-eyes to get Cheez-its from my dad, passionately barking at squirrels, staring at the kitchen floor and hoping food would appear, taking corners too fast and skittering into the wall. Whenever I visited, he would jump all over me as though I'd returned from a long journey, then dash to his toy basket to play Chewball Attack. Because I'm the only one he plays with, even if he has to stop and catch his breath every now and then.

But now, he's losing himself. He's so blind that he can't see an open door, much less dash out of it. The feigned deafness when he didn't want to come inside has become real, to the point where he isn't even disturbed by the vacuum. He can't jump up, roll over for tummy rubs, or even walk much. He's forgotten his toys exist. The dog who used to block the door with his body and howl for hours when my mom went to work now can't even tell if anyone is home or not.

And yet somehow, he still recognized me. When I woke him from a sleep so profound I feared he was dead, he wagged his tail and lowered his head for ear-scritches. Despite all his losses, he still knows me, and is still glad I'm there. Which is why each goodbye does nothing to lessen my eventual grief: Once he goes, there won't be any dogs who love me. If my parents get another puppy, it won't know me, and I won't really know it, either. Patrick and I want a dog, but that won't happen for a while yet. And none of these future dogs will be Jasper, with his floppy ears and ridiculously soft fur and little white socks. With so much love in my life, why does the thought of losing Jasper's hurt so badly?

Now it really is time to let go, before he loses himself entirely. His little bionic dog body is mostly keeping him out of pain, and I'm grateful for that. But with such rapid degeneration, I don't think he can hold out much longer, and I don't want to see him get worse. I will still be a sobbing wreck when he goes, but at least I can know it will be a release for him. And I'm comforted to know that until the end, the love will be mutual.

So, anyone out there have any brilliant suggestions for places to stay while in New York City this weekend? Last time Cass and I went, we stayed in a little family-run inn in Morningside Heights, which was great — the shared bathrooms were skeevy, but the rooms were clean and the staff was friendly and there was a great corner grocery store around the corner, with stacks of fresh fruit outside and homemade baked goods and salads on the inside. And it was $60 or so a night.

And I can't find it again, mostly since I don't remember its name. After hours of frustrating Internet searches, I finally just used Google Street View to take a virtual walk around Morningside Heights and find the address where the place had been, but there's no signage, and Google doesn't acknowledge that there's a hotel in that area.

The last time we stayed in New York, a casual Internet search turned up a dozen or so places like that — semi-sketchy family-run inns with shared bathrooms and cheap rooms. But that was years ago. Now Google is only giving me hostels (as low as $19 a night!) and places in Newark and downtown luxury hotels with rooms up to $995 a night. Was there an entire industry of fly-by-night hotels that got shut down over the last four or five years?

At any rate, I'm flying into town late Friday night, spending the weekend wandering around on my own, probably working in The Onion's NYC office on Monday, and then Monday night, appearing with Keith, Josh, Nathan, and others at Union Hall in Brooklyn to do a reading / presentation on behalf of our new book Inventory. (30% off on Amazon, though for a while it was 75% off, which propelled it into the top 100 bestselling books on the site.)

So if you find yourself in the area on Monday night, you should absolutely come out and say hi.

And in the meantime, I'm actually considering a hostel, since I've never stayed in one, and I'm curious. It'd be an adventure. Besides, when traveling, I pretty much just view a hotel room as a place to be unconscious for a while when exhausted, so I don't really want to pay $250 for a bed I'll use exactly the same way whether it's in a nice private room or a hostel. Though I am also considering staying at the Chelsea, just to stay at the Chelsea. Unfortunately, they have rooms available Sunday and Monday night, but not Friday or Saturday. So… I dunno. I'm perilously close to pulling a catechism and sleeping on a park bench. That also would be an adventure.

• 17:09 Anyone know who the wag Liberal was who just wrote 'no' on their ballot? #
• 10:16 @BrandtOtter Time for a Double Dissolution I think! #
• 10:17 Pondering putting a little money each week into a 'get the eye operation' fund. It's very, very tempting! #
• 11:49 Some awesome photos of actors dressed up as their old roles: atticus-flinch.livejournal.com/473373.html #
• 12:03 @horngirl It's such a weird time isn't it, with all of this DD politics? I'm rather excited. #
• 12:04 Last night, we watched the news at my sister in law's place. Is it just me or does Labour look like Christmas came early this year? #spill #
• 12:05 RT @ajdisse: Libs fell for old trick - artificial deadline to create conflict & leader killed from within. Dates back to Roman times. #
• 12:07 For my US friends - Aust. is experiencing a massive political crisis which may result in the Gov General dissolving power + election call #
• 12:21 @Ambitious_wench Literally, yes. Metaphorically, imagine what would happen if the Repubs utterly turned on each other. Its chaotic here :) #
• 12:31 @Ambitious_wench It's kind of insane here because it would be like the Rethugs election Bush to party leadership again. Or Palin! #
• 14:52 RT @hwakelam: vote for climate change action in #Copenhagen is.gd/59zCB - over 50,000 votes and 197 countries to date. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

So NaNo went rather well. Out of the 20 stories I was originally scheduled to complete between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30, I completed 16 (plus a bonus fic), one got pushed back to Jan. 1, two were dropped because the challenge died, and I was unable to complete one because of time constraints. Ending wordcount for NaNo was 60k and some change.

Out of the stories I wrote recently, three will definitely be expanded/continued though not until mid to late next year, plus I want to finish an already started sequel to another story. Those lucky stories are:
1) Part three of the Psych 'Case Files' Series (Missing Cockatiel, Missing Conventioneers)
2) FMA story 'Discipline' will be expanded into a full story
3) Part two of the Merlin 'Legends' Series (Legends Reborn - just posted)
4) Part two of the BtVS spin-off Edmond Holloway Series

In January, I'll be participating in 'NaNo Redux' - aka, 50+k in a month, and actually writing a novel this time. Already have a ton of notes written up for it. Hoping this one will actually be something I can look at marketing. Whee!

( Challenge fic due in December/early next year )

Title: Legends Reborn
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: Merlin, Arthur/Merlin. Reincarnation — "I'll miss you till I meet you."
Summary: Merlin's life comes crashing to an end when Arthur dies unexpectedly, bringing their destinies to a halt. Destiny draws them together again and Merlin finds Arthur once more in the modern world, but he's not the only one who remembers the past.
Written For: Springkink

( Merlin felt the entire world freeze as the arrow pierced Arthur's heart. )

Tony tells me that the Chamber Singers ensemble director, Evil Governess, actually teaches that "German is a very dark language" with dark vowels (total BS, as German [a], [e], and [E] are all way brighter (more closed and further forward) than in English, to say nothing of the mixed vowels). Not only this, but she apparently requires that "werden" be pronounced with an open, woofy, dark [E], which I would bet my Ling degree is actually literally INCORRECT by the standards of Bühnendeutsch, to which she professes to be adhering.

This upsets me more than it should, but luckily I am no longer in that ensemble, so I need not grind my teeth and ask for my neighbors to bodily prevent me from attacking her (verbally or physically), at least in front of the rest of the ensemble.

Oh, I forgot to mention a moment of triumph this morning. The three of us all dread taking the rent checks downstairs to the landlord because it's hard not to end up sitting there for half an hour or longer being talked at (often proselytized at). Usually we assign one person to take all three checks, and this month it was my turn. Last time I had to frantically invent something I'd left on the stove upstairs to get away after about 20 minutes, but I seem to have discovered a surefire method of getting away with a mere inquiry as to my health and well-being. I went downstairs in my nightshirt and boxers, perhaps disturbing his Baptist-ministry proprieties. Less than a minute and I was away, and Tony didn't even have to call down and invent a reason for me.