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Thursday, January 8th, 2009
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8:33a
I have FOUND the ninth post-it note!
This would sound more dramatic and interesting-fantasy-worlds if it weren't a post-it, but if it weren't a post-it then it would lose all of its charm. It was stuck to the back of the DVD player that's built into the side of my TV, and it is about Jack convincing the Doctor to watch porn. Thing of beauty!
I have also OVERSLEPT, which is sad considering I fell asleep at nine-fifteen last night, but obviously I needed the rest. Thankfully I'm conditioned to wake up around seven, even on days when I don't need to, so I managed to get out the door by seven-fifteen and still make it in on time. I'm sure the new playlist helped -- there's a bunch of Old Blind Dogs on there, and there's nothing to get you moving in the morning like The Battle O' Harlaw. Of fifty thousand hielan' men but fifty three gae'd hame, and out of all the lawlan' men, fifty marched with Graham.
With a diddy ay oh and a fal and a doe, indeed.
Having some issues with the iPhone and the new laptop, though; for some reason iTunes doesn't want to recognise video files anymore, so I can't put videos on my phone. And the new computer in general is internet-squirrelly; it will connect just fine, but then an hour or two later it'll drop the connection so hard that I have to restart to get it back. I think it's got to be some problem with the wireless software, the router works fine when I test it with the iPhone.
Also: this morning was looking at a Japanese import shop and took advantage of their "Translate to English" button. Fortunately for my own amusement, they use Google translator, which in the past has tried to tell me that "paste the forehead to the walls of the pan" is how the Danish make bacon. This time the best gem was "The Theory of Service" which is going to have to be a fanfic sooner or later.
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(1 comment | comment on this) Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
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8:48p
It has gone beyond Cold As Balls out there. It's cold enough to freeze your Winnebago, guys.
(Gratuitous Muppets reference is gratuitous!)
We just watched epic amounts of Wheel with Bland and Blanda. Bland's actually not too bad at Wheel, apparently he used to watch it with his grandmother a lot.
And then I had to walk home and lost feeling in my fingers through my leather gloves. Thank christ for parkas and long underwear.
I got a very cheery note from the Super that he's fixing my bedroom window on Friday. I guess that means tomorrow night I have to peel off all the tape I was using as a draft-stopper. Properly sealed windows, for great yay!
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2:55p
What is Hetalia and why is ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) fandomsecrets covered in it?
Ahem.
I am done with the phone interviews, thank god. On the other hand, I mapped out the Meatloaf Bakery and it's actually off Fullerton, not Belmont, quite a ways from the El stop. So I am not going to be paying them a visit anytime soon, most likely, and thus R is going to be disappointed when I do not show up with meatloaf for our Wheelfest tonight. But I will pick up some Byron's, 'cause I know what sandwich he always gets there. I can't actually get in touch with him, since his phone service has mysteriously vanished.
Poor lad's feeling the pinch a little at the moment -- he's cancelling his cable tv soon, and thus we will no longer have pre-queued Wheel to watch. I'm getting a converter box for my DVR, however, so on the other hand I can set the DVR to record it each night, which is almost as good. A man's gotta have his Wheel fix, after all.
I've been working on the self-publishing project on-and-off and I'm just about ready to do final prep for Other People Can Smell You -- tonight I need to make the cover and then begin the process of figuring out how to upload everything properly. I suspect that I find the prepwork so entertaining because seeing to tiny details sooths me. I've tweaked the page numbering four or five times, and spent an hour or two mucking with the formatting of the front matter. It should look pretty splendid when it's done, though.
It's taught me a lot about the basics of using the new Word as well -- having to relearn the location of nearly everything, from scratch, is such a pain in the ass. I wouldn't mind the buttons if the menus were more intuitive, but some buttons show up in three different menus and some buttons are in menus that they shouldn't be in at all. Plus some menus only show up if you click other buttons, what the fuck. It's like a really boring video game.
(Speaking of which, I am totally pwning the Temple of Time in Zelda. Who loves the ball and chain? SAM LOVES THE BALL AND CHAIN.)
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(1 comment | comment on this) Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
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10:07p
So I was going to watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and instead I wrote a space operetta.
Uh.
Oops?
Title: I Were The Heavens
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG for language
Summary: A sixteen-year-old boy from Boeshane is going to win the war. The Time Agency has a vested interest in children like him -- and so does the Admiral of the Fleet.
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5:42p
So, I did not get meatloaf. It was a very icy snowy evening, and I decided coming directly home would be more intelligent.
I had something else to post about, but hell if I can remember what it was. Something to do with the interviews I spent all afternoon doing. Blah.
In other news, I mentioned ter369 the other day; she was a friend and fellow-fan who died recently and is much missed. cluegirl and juliefortune noted that the twelfth is her birthday, and are going to hold a fic-fest in her honour. I will probably not participate -- I don't know, I don't really cope with death well and writing for Ter would make a bit too sad, I think. But I think people who do want to write should.
If you'd like more info about Ter's Birthday Fic Party, or to participate, you can check out Clue's post. No rules, just fun, as Clue and Julie say. :)
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12:48p
Like all true terrible fantasy, Fire of the Crystal Elven Magesword of Dragonstar: The Pegasus Chronicles, Book Three: The Moonwand Cycle really never does end.
iambickilometer wrote some of it. And added illustrations. Jack Harkness with elf hair, you guys. Rodney McKay with elf hair.
The woman of Sibur is in the forest!
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10:48a
Y HELO THAR WURK, U CAN HAS A SAM!
I had seventy new emails when I arrived this morning. Fortunately most of them were easy fixes/helps and that freed me up...just in time for BossBoss to pounce on me and ask me if I would do telephone interviews for a bunch of candidates for Coworker J's job. Coworker J pretty much has it sewn up, but we have to go through the motions to make it look legit. Which means I get to call people and ask them challenging questions! HOORAY. Or, you know, not.
My Swaptree stuff is already starting to arrive, for great media yay. I am going to go home tonight and watch The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen! Thank you Bernard, your love of crap fantasy is going to greatly enhance my DVD library.
I might stop off at Belmont and try the new meatloaf restaurant there, though. I feel like my life may not be complete until I have tried a meatloaf cupcake with mashed potato topping. Meatloaf and cheesy steampunk action flicks...can't beat it!
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(comment on this) Monday, January 5th, 2009
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10:48p
This afternoon R came by and woke me up with his buzzing at my door and kidnapped me. We ended up at his place with Bland and Bland's girlfriend and Porkchop (just...don't ask, that's actually what we call him), watching the Fiesta Bowl.
Then R broke out a Christmas gift from his mum, who thinks he drinks way more than he does to judge from how she always sends him home with wine. This time she gave him a Rabbit, which is not a vibrator as many of you are right now thinking but is in fact a really fancy wine de-corker. So to test it out we naturally had to open one of the millions of bottles of wine he has.
And see, my Guests left me cupcakes, and Bland's girlfriend's mum sent HER cupcakes, so...
We had wine. And two kinds of cupcakes. And watched football.
My head is spinning with cognitive dissonance.
I mean, it was dessert wine, if that makes it any better.
Do you think it would be seen as chauvinistic to name Bland's girlfriend "Cupcake"? She's going to need a name...
And now to bed. Again.
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3:06p
PHOTO POST!
I am home and unpacking, albeit slowly; I have to play with all the toys I got for Christmas as I unpack them. I am wearing fuzzy yellow slippers, drinking herbal chai, and I've been working my way through the first few days of my Kirigami calendar -- it's like really advanced paper snowflakes. There will be photos.
In the meantime, however, a few images from the Blanton:
You know what's missing from modern currency? Porn.
I did a sketch of this, because it captivated me -- it was a print, I think 17th or 18th century -- of "Actors in the Italian Theatre". Looking closely I noticed one of them was masked, a veccio mask that's probably Capitano though it might be Dottore. I love this style of mask, because it's just nose and brow, and leaves most of the face free to express emotion. I'll have to scan the sketch next time I have the energy.
This is the Embodiment of Astronomy. I like her neat globe thing and the chef's hat she's wearing. :D
This is the Cildo Meireles installation I was talking about, How To Build Cathedrals. That's six hundred thousand pennies on the floor, eight hundred communion wafers in a vertical column, and two thousand lit cattle bones on the ceiling. You can walk inside the black gauze, which is where I got these photos of the installation and especially the ceiling. It's just marvelous.
The best surprise when I got home, however, was that my guests, who stayed here a few days after I went to Texas, cleaned the flat and left me a Treasure Hunt. :D A post-it note on the fridge informed me that there were nine treasures hidden all over the flat, and I should find them before I have R over.
Now, my Guests know me IRL but also read my journal, so they're aware of the porn. Oh are they aware of the porn. And that is what they left me....a flat covered in porn.
( HOW COOL IS THAT! Uh, but not worksafe... )
But I think this is my favourite. Yes...that's ROOMBA/TRASHCAN PORN.
And then they said, "You have to blog this!" and I said OH YES, and here we are.
I'm going back to sleep now. :D
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(comment on this) Sunday, January 4th, 2009
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12:42p
Outgoing: Five shitty fantasy novels.
Incoming: Two books of essays for me, two DVDs for Emmy, and a Jill Scott CD for R.
\o/
I also found Bernard's stash of marginally terrible pop CDs, so those are going up too. Unfortunately everyone on Swaptree wants to get rid of their old Jewel albums as well, so there aren't many takers.
Meanwhile,we continue the saga of Fire of the Crystal Elven Magesword of Dragonstar: The Pegasus Chronicles, Book Three: The Moonwand Cycle. As a scholar of the series I bring to you the tale of The Elves of Atlantis and their allies, the inhabitants of the Torch Wood.
I'm pretty sure iambickilometer and I hate ourselves a little right now.
Tomorrow I am taking off early early early for home. Last night I texted R because I was watching the Colts-Chargers game and wanted to know if he saw that AWESOME INTERCEPTION, and he texted back "Yes I did! Come over, I have snacks! We can watch SNL!"
I texted back, "I'm still in Texas. See you Monday?"
To which he replied, "We have six hours of muthafuggin WHEEL to watch. Bring Byron's."
So apparently tomorrow I fly home, unpack, and then get to spend most of the day watching Wheel and eating onion straws. DOUBLE WIN.
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(comment on this) Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
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8:25p
Sometimes I read my flist and I think, there must be some subtle way of hooking X up with Y. They were made for each other!
And then I remember I'm not subtle, and also reading someone's LJ != knowing them or who they would want to go out with. Still, surely sooner or later someone will find their soulmate in the Cafe.
We went to the Blanton Museum of Art on the UT campus today and I talked a lot about the use of light and colour and composition, and then we snickered at the fig leaves on the plaster statue castings. I startled one of the docents when I said "Oh, a Kouros boy!" and ran across the room to get a good look. She glanced at me and said "You knew what that was? Like, from memory?"
Well, yeah. It's not like they're hard to spot, they all have that smile that makes them look like the special-needs children of the ancient world.
I absolutely fell in love with one piece, How To Build Cathedrals, an installation concerning the relationship between the evangelisation of the new world and the economic benefits derived from it. It's hard to see how beautiful it is just from that one photo, but I have more I'll be posting soon. The bones glow.
We got to talking over lunch about the Ransom Centre, which has the First Photograph Ever Taken in its archive. I started to explain that I'd recently seen the first photograph ever taken of a person...
Sam: I saw the first photograph of a person ever taken the other day. It was by accident --
Mum: *dies laughing*
Sam: Uh?
Mum: It was someone's finger, wasn't it?
All: *groan*
This is why I will never have any particular reverence for Great Art. I was raised by someone who mentally draws moustaches on every Mona Lisa she comes across.
The architecture of the Blanton is apparently much-talked-about and with good reason; it's an interesting meld of Spanish-villa and "mathematical" architecture, kind of like wandering around in a technical drafting mated with a southwestern mission house. It's extremely pleasant and suits the surrounding area well.
Then we came home and I played a bunch of Okami while alternating between whining about how HAAAARD the Power Slash move is and shushing Emmy, who kept reading the walkthrough aloud. It's a beautiful game, artistically, but occasionally a little slow moving. Mum watched me play, which was HILARIOUS because she kept shouting "headbutt the vase headbutt the vaaaaaase" and got mad when I had to beat the shit out of a Taiko drummer because she likes Taiko drums.
Dad spent quite a bit of time over dinner trying to explain RPG-style games to her.
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2:40p
If only to prevent the Cafe from emailing me en masse...:D
I just got the casting info on the new Doctor; google around if you want the name, I won't spoiler it though you'll have a hard time avoiding them I imagine.
He looks cool, can't wait to see him in action. Not nuts about that hair, though. Very scene-kid, kind of Robert Patterson, like an angry longhaired cat crawled onto his head. You can't deny it looks alien, I suppose...
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10:20a
So we got to talking about shitty fantasy novels...
mad_martha: Just out of curiosity, what sort of shitty fantasy novels are we talking about?
copperbadge: Lots of Dragonlance, mainly; some Margaret Weis and some Terry Goodkind too. Lots of titles with words like "elven" and "sword" and "mage". It makes me want to write a satire called THE ELVEN MAGESWORD, but it's probably been done.
metallumai: ...the CRYSTAL elven magesword...
copperbadge: OF DRAGONSTAR!
meran_flash: I remember being in Barnes & Noble once, when I passed by a display full of some series that had a bunch of fire and shirtless elves on pegasi on the cover.
copperbadge: PEGASI. That's what are missing from THE ELVEN MAGESWORD! *makes notes*
meran_flash: Fire of the Crystal Elven Magesword of Dragonstar: The Pegasus Chronicles!
copperbadge: Book Three: The Moonwand Cycle.
meran_flash: *UNLEASHES AWESOME*
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