She is like a horse grazing
a hill pasture that someone makes
smaller by coming every night
to pull the fences in and in.

She has stopped running wide loops,
stopped even the tight circles.
She drops her head to feed; grass
is dust, and the creekbed's dry.

Master, come with your light
halter. Come and bring her in.

So, okay, I lied, I haven't been around as much. Things are fucked up on several levels right now.

However, we did go see the new X-Men movie. The best part about it? THE CONAN TRAILER BEFOREHAND. OMFG. Unf.
( YouTube embedding below the cut )

Fie, it doesn't work, at least not for me.

HERE GO WATCH! omg.

I couldn't be more excited about this if I were in it. *quivers*

I want to thank y'all for the comments you left on my post about my kitty. I'm sorry for not answering them, but I'm pretty sure y'all understand, and will believe me when I tell you they mean the world to me, and help so much. They really do.

I'm going to post some photos of her, and hopefully that'll help too. She's such my beautiful girl.

( Dinah )

I knew her when she was a teeny kitten; when she was a young girl, her owner left her with me instead of taking her to grad school. She's been my beautiful girl ever since, and it never mattered how crazy she drove me or her litterbox issues or anything except the way she would curl up next to my hip or behind my knees or come and insist on being in my lap and resting her chin on my wrist while I tried to type. I love her so much, and I miss her like hell, but she was with me when she died, and I hope that she was comforted. I hope that she's curled up next to God's hip right now and content. Ready with those claws if even God messes with her feet.

Hi guys. My kitty is gone. If you want to read last night's slightly drunken post about it, it's here. I'm...okay. Not great. But she died in my lap, and on her own schedule - no one helped her along. So that's good.

Probably no tagging for a few days.

First, Eric shoots his mouth off. And then, when I hie myself over to IMDB to figure out the answer to Shane's question, he takes one look at Rade Serbedzija and goes into paroxysms of joy, swearing they had the hottest thing ever during filming.

So I went researching. And now I have a new celebrity crush.

JUST WHAT I NEEDED.

But seriously, look at this GQMF. He looks like a cross between Viggo Mortensen and Liam Neeson. Nngh.

http://www.journalfen.net/community/est_meta/1398975.html

If you('re still even watching Supernatural and) have Supernatural set up to DVR only new episodes, doublecheck your DVR -- mine thinks tonight's episode ran last week, so it wasn't going to record it.

Late notice, I know! But for what it's worth.

Sorry I've been so absent lately. Q4 is absolutely kicking my ass at work. It's without a doubt the toughest, busiest Q4 I've ever had to deal with and it's killing my creative brain. Oooops.

On the bright side, I HAVE A JOB. I have awesome coworkers. Etc.

But I don't have much writing brain right now. Soon, I hope!

Okay, this is pretty amazing. It's a video of a girl making herself up as Jared Leto for a cosplay thing, and, just. Wow. The things you can do with makeup!

The Jared Look

Seriously. Just, if you haven't seen it yet, go watch.

Just FYI, I've realized that despite my talent for ignoring the obvious, soon it will be impossible to pretend that getting onto the wifi at Dragon*Con will be anything other than IMPOSSIBLE. The hotel always makes you pay for it, and then you can never stay connected, and when you are connected the connection is craaaaaaaaaawling because there's 30,000 other geeks all using the same wifi.

And I can't tether my netbook to my phone.

*weeps*

So tagging, which has been pretty much at a stand-still for me for unrelated reasons, is probably going to remain at a stand-still for several more days.

I'm sorry! I'm going to try to get online (maybe the wired connection will work better?), but I can't promise at all at all.

Well, apparently JF and DW aren't playing as nicely together as they had been; none of my entries have crossposted since 7/17. I expect it's related to a known issue that's interfering with importing from JF, but thought I'd mention it -- I really haven't been as quiet as it looks. :)

If anyone has a phone or other mobile device that takes a 240px wide by 400px high wallpaper (Samsung Impression does, which is what I have), there are four from The Losers under the cut. They have black bars at the top and bottom to leave room for the icons and menus on my Impression -- and also because my VLC screengrabs are only 304px high and don't enlarge very well. They're not super-enhanced or anything, I just wanted some and I don't have access to my 'puter with Photoshop this morning, so I was using Sumo Paint, which was giving me trouble when saving. I got frustrated and quit, but not before I managed to get four made: Pooch laughing, Cougar and Jensen (b/w), Cougar and Clay, and Clay (b/w).

ETA: Spoilers in comments.

( Full size, not thumbnails )

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For my U.S. pals.

Via NARAL:

Hi –

I just learned some bad news about the new health-care law.

The Obama administration just announced that it will exclude abortion coverage in the temporary health-insurance pools that will transition us into the new health-care system.

This policy means that women who are part of these pools because they have significant health problems, such as diabetes or cancer, will not be able to access abortion care, even if their health is at further risk.

The administration’s policy is similar to the ban proposed by anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.)! This is outrageous.

Tell President Obama that the abortion-coverage ban was not part of the agreement on health reform and that he should not exclude abortion coverage from new, temporary high-risk pools.

http://bit.ly/cvveZf

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Okay, remember that "I write like" meme?

I did it after I'd seen it on, like three journals, and I thought it was kind of funny -- funny amusing, not funny skeevy-as-hell -- because I got all men except for Margaret Atwood. And then I just didn't really think about it.

Well, smarter people than me did think about it, thank goodness, and guess what? (This will shock you.) It turns out it's no coincidence -- nor much to do with my writing -- that I got all men: there are only three women writers on the entire list.

Also? Every single writer on the list is white.

The creator's response?

Thanks for your reply. I've added more writers into the database recently. But I *absolutely* will not add people into the database due to their race or gender. I will not search for lists of white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or any other types of people that you _took care to differentiate_. All people are equal to me, and equality means not looking at skin color or different types of chromosomes.

I think the question is closed.

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Originally posted by soph at Regarding the recent news on user purging

If you've seen the recent LJ news post, please be aware that it was written from the wrong spec. While I (soph, the original author of this post), am not staff, this has been confirmed officially by staff and the news post has been rewritten accordingly.

Only accounts that have no entries, or have only the initial welcome entry, will be purged.

A new news post is not being made because of the issue with News posts and notifications; the backend would likely crash if two News posts were made so close to each other.

Please repost this! There is a 'Repost this' button at the bottom of this entry.

( More details, including the full specification )




Note: Repost button only available on LJ

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Via recessional, I am Isaiah Mustafa answering a bunch of twitter @s for Old Spice.

BEST. EVAR.

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Wheee!! My mundane_bingo card is under the cut!

( your mail is soaking wet )

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Anyone going to Comic Con?

Westboro Baptist Church will be there. They're scheduled, apparently, to picket the con from 1:15 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 22.


I can't stop laughing.

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Via copperbadge, take a gander at this post and then consider sending email to help save 500 baby swifts. It's free! And they're a protected species! Just um. Not protected enough, so, some emails -- detailed instructions at the post -- would be helpful.

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Specifically, please point me to the Ros fic! There must be lots of it. LOTS. Because Ros is aMAZing. Omg. *grabby hands* I'll take any good fic, though I don't know most of the characters well -- Ros and Adam and Harry and Jenny are pretty much the only ones whose names I know. I've only seen season 5 eps.

Anyone? I'll be digging around on my own, too, but if I could get recs, that would be even better. Help help help.

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If you use the iTunes store, you may want to change your password and remove your credit card account info, if any:

http://mashable.com/2010/07/04/itunes-accounts-hacked/

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( Fourteen un-retouched 720px x 304px screencaps of "You take care of your bear"-guy from The Losers )

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Via lithiumdoll, this new show looks like a lot of fun -- I just need to figure out when it airs.

( Undercovers )

I'm also still pretty excited about Nikita, largely because it stars a woman who's in her 30s as a bad-ass super-spy. I saw someone worrying that she'd be eclipsed by the younger agent who was brought in to replace her and hunt her down, but I haven't seen anything about that agent in the previews, so I'm not to worried. It could happen, but I'll risk it.

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This is what I'm watching, only I didn't know it was on, so I've missed the first half or so. So I've now set the DVR to record every episode in hopes of catching the entire Top Gear Bolivia special at some point.

Why?

Well, partly because it's cracking me up. But also because POOCH. Where else will I have any chance to learn a damned thing about what driving in Bolivia is like? Also, who's the guy in charge? I can't remember his name. Anyway, ( are these spoilers? It has a Wiki page, is it too late for spoilers? ANYway, )

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So I was walking out of the building today to go to lunch, right? And out of the building, when you face front, you see our other building, and when you turn left, you walk past the rest of our building and past some trees and into the parking lot -- that is, our building does ( this: )

So I come out of our building, turn left, no one else around that I can see, and before I reach the corner I hear a short, quiet, feminine laugh.

I feel a brief spike of adrenaline, because hey, I thought I was alone! So where do I look to see who else is around?

Up into the trees.

*facepalms*


(She was, in fact, talking on her cell phone just around the corner. As anyone might have supposed, if they weren't me.)

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I'm a little afraid of my apartments right now. July is "resident appreciation month", which means a pizza night on 7/6, movie night every Wednesday, a free newspaper on Sunday 7/11, Wii night on the 15th, yard sale on the 17th, breakfast on the 20th, Xbox night on the 22nd, a book swap on the 24th, and a pool party on the 31st.


*quakes behind locked doors*

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Still feeling thin-skinned and depressed, with bonus added wordlessness. Not really sure what's going on with me.

In other news, GIP (DW only).

I do love some pallas cats.

Also, some of the banners here are mine, and I like them, but there are lots of gorgeous ones there. Like this one, which is not mine!


Banner by meghanc

I hope my words come back to me in time to play.

And also to get a bingo.

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( Spoilers for Dr. Who, Cold Blood )

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sheryden on LJ has posted a picture of Jason as Conan, omg, I had not seen this one before and it is of the awesome. Those fanboys who were all "oh he's skinny, he can't be Conan" need to stfd and stfu.

This is Conan.

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Omg. *clutches this*

This may be relevant to some of your interests.

The Internet Movie Firearms Database

The Losers page
The Stargate Atlantis page
The Stargate SG1 page
The Supernatural page
The G.I. Jane page
The Criminal Minds page
ET CETERA.

This is so awesome. It doesn't tell you a lot about the firearms, but it tells you what they are, and then you can Google that shit.

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( "Now! Once you're armed with one of these /super/ lists of enemies, you can be as nasty as you like, and yet feel your behavior is morally justified." )

Oh John Cleese, I love you so. This is exactly the kind of thing I need to remember.

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I've got the button!

I've been reading some of the myriad threads on writing h/c, and I keep running up against this idea that, okay, sure, if you care for a person with a disability and you want to write about your experience, you have that right, but we want to see people with the disability write about their experiences because their experiences are the important ones and when you able-bodied people write about your experiences, you're taking up valuable reading space and erasing the people with disabilities.

( There goes the button. If you don't want to hear about why I disagree with that, don't read any further. And please note that comments are off, so if you read further and want to comment, you won't be able to do it here. )

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I'm watching the first episode of In The Wild With Harry Butler, and I am so in love! Y'all, this guy. Almost the first thing he does is find some baby crocodiles, discover one of them has broken a tooth from a scrap with his brother, and takes the little guy back to camp to fix him up. During which time he talks about how delicate and fragile crocodiles are, shows you his beautiful jaws, how neatly his feet tuck back when he swims, shows you the teeny crocodile ears (ears!), and tickles his belly. I just. JUST. I know there's some controversy surrounding some of his views, but for watching someone talk about wildlife, I've never seen anyone I enjoy more.

And it's not even $18 for all 26 episodes.

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Via marinarusalka, if you go to see the A-Team movie, stay to the end of the credits. No word on what happens (which is good as I don't want to be spoiled even for an after-the-credits thing (unless the film pulls a Splice on us)), but I thought I'd pass it along. :)

ETA: Spoilers (big big big for serious spoilers) for The Losers now in the comments at Dreamwidth!

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1. I watched the Justified season finale last night. Now, let me preface this by saying that I have been watching only sporadically. I've DVR'd every ep, but I've probably erased twice as many as I've seen, and when I've watched, I've always been doing something else. So how the hell did I get so freakin' invested in these characters??!!? Omg. Can it be next season now? I promise I will actually watch this time.

( More things. And if you're on Dreamwidth, OMG LOOK AT THAT ARROW! ♥ )

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Via charlieblue, Keanu Reeves is awesome.

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Man, this fandom has some damned fine writers.

Quintet for Blood and Bonding, in the Key of Home, by Feather.

( This is ~17,800 words of unadulterated awesome. )

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Via Wordweaverlynn, Women's unique heart attack symptoms. Memorize them and please spread the word -- they're not what you'd think.

Her Guide to a Heart Attack: Recognizing Female Heart Attack Symptoms

And do read the article. The symptoms make more sense in context than as just a bulleted list, which is why I don't include them here. Three excerpts:

Goldberg, who is familiar with the study, says, "About six weeks before the actual heart attack, women were more likely to experience shortness of breath, unexplained fatigue or stomach pain as an early warning sign that they might have a blocked artery."

"I felt like I was being rolled over by a steam engine-couldn't make plans," she says. Doctors put her on antidepressants. She also developed shortness of breath. "I was constantly gasping for breath." But because of the depression diagnosis, "I thought this was an anxiety issue."

If it doesn't occur to the emergency room doctor to check for heart attack, be bold. Goldberg tells women to say outright: "I think I'm having a heart attack." Because many doctors still don't recognize that women's symptoms differ, they may mistake them for arthritis, pulled muscles, indigestion, gastrointestinal problems, or even anxiety and hypochondria.

In short, female heart attack symptoms may be missed-and dismissed. When one of Goldberg's patients entered the emergency room with such symptoms, doctors gave her antacids. "She said, 'Listen, I'm diabetic and women's heart disease symptoms can be different, and unless you give me an EKG, I'm not leaving this place.' And the next day, she had a bypass."

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Non-spoilery review: *retch* Who did Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley piss off?

( Spoilery review )

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lunabee34 writes:

As I'm sure you all saw last week, Betty White is the last Golden Girl standing now that Rue McClanahan has passed away.

Fanfic for this show pretty much does not exist (as thelastgoodname can attest), and that's just wrong. Wrong, I say!

So if you love Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia half as much as I do, let's change that 100 words at a time!

Femslash, gen, het, slash, whatever you want to write--as long as it celebrates these wonderful characters!

Please signal boost, says the girl with the tiny flist. :)

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