Rat Creature's Journal

A couple things:

1. Like many of you, I absolutely loved parts 1 and 2 of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (still available for free viewing until midnight tonight, I think). About part three, well...the less said the better. Completist though I am, I'd almost suggest watching only the first two sections. (...of the spoiler-laden unlocked posts about part three, this one by esorlehcar comes closest to my thoughts).

2. The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! (which, okay...I snuck into after seeing TDK. My bad!): Yay! Creepy and Dark and Frothy and Silly and Fun. I'll leave it to you to figure out which adjectives go with which movie. I will say - without committing Spoilerism - that Heath Ledger was just as horribly excellent as the Joker as almost every review is saying. There are serious things to say about both movies (especially TDK), but...I'm leaving that to other people this time.

3. In the "Why Doesn't Fandom Operate To Suit My Wishes?" Category, today's entry relates to naominovik's Temeraire series (the latest of which being the just published Victory of Eagles). I loved the most recent book - that's not the problem. No, the problem is that I can't find what seems to me to be the most obvious slash pairing in the series anywhere, and that makes me sad. ( Click here to see my SPOILERY rationale why it's the obvious pairing and my suspicion about why nobody seems to be writing it. Note: the word 'Race' is going to enter into this discussion )

4. And speaking of Race. There was a piece this week in Time magazine about the much-discussed Obama-cover in The New Yorker. In it, author James Poniewozik suggest that "our body politic needs to lighten up" and says "...the knock on the New Yorker cover was like the old critique of Archie Bunker [The protagonist of All in the Family, Norman Lear's Americanized version of the British comedy Till Death Us Do Part] that some idiot bigot somewhere might take it literally and enjoy it." On the surface, the analogy makes a certain amount of sense; I remember a student telling me - more than a decade ago - that his working-class, immigrant Polish family in Queens absolutely loved the show and never got the irony at all. Archie Bunker was their hero for 'telling it like it is."

But that wasn't true for most people - ( and one of the reasons why it wasn't true was because there was an actual context for Archie's words.... )

And finally...

5. Parts one and two of the first draft of the Terms of Service for the Archive of Our Own are up at otw_news. Go over and check them out...and give feedback.

2008

Go outside, lie on my back and look at the red, red moon.

Finish final proofreading of The Water Grinds the Stone. Did the first hundred thousand words today, but my eyes are crossing at this point and my concentration is shot, so the rest is slated for tomorrow. Finally did that up front trim one of my betas advised while I was at it. Cut 3424 words of pointless tangents. Fun stuff but it didn't move the story forward.

Finish redrafting Mira's story. Revise first part. Done. ~37000 words

Finish revising the rest of Mira's story.

Finish writing the rest of Mira's story. Only seven months late. ~????? words.

Do not feed Flashpoint plot bunnies. Hugh Dillon, babies, Hugh fucking Dillon. Looking indecently hot with the shaved head and I never noticed those eyes when I watched Hard Core Logo (probably because I was always staring at Callum Keith Rennie). No, Ed Lane does NOT need to meet Billy Tallent. *Stamps the damn things into goo.*

Write the third Sam/John/Rodney story with [Bad username: eretria.] Started. ~1500 words.

Birthday. There will be steak. I am not vegetarian. I want my steak and cheesecake, damn it!

Zine gen SGA canon-type story first draft due Sept. 14. (No plot, no ideas, no nada, ack, ack, ack, run in circles, flail and wail and flap.) Target word count: ~5000-6000. Present word count: 0000. That'll teach me to say no. Alternatively to writing, change name and flee to Peru Scotland.

Eclosion (sequel to Helical) aka STAMPEDE fic: outline and write. Possibly with eretria.

Red dress thing.

Kiss short fic for enname.

Thoughtcrimes fic: plot, outline and write. Exactly why Welles thought Brendan Dean would be the perfect partner for Freya. Also, possible Alias crossover. Brendan is absolutely Project Christmas material.

Cyberpunk SGA au: plot, outline and write. Selling meatsuit time and the ghost rebellion.

Space pirates SGA/SG-1au: plot, outline and write.

Neckar Squares and Ferris Wheels: Heave-ho.

Wires aka Rodney to the rescue: toss it too, there's plenty of other stuck in a virtual reality stories in SGA already.

SGA Secret Santa. 'Cause I know I will.


2009


Red Ribbon au sequel: plot, outline and write.

Equestrian SGA au: plot, outline and write. Yeah, this was supposed be done for the Olympics. Laugh, clown, laugh.



There's just an alarming number of AUs there. So while I apparently have said all I have in me to say about Atlantis stories, I haven't said all I want to about John and Rodney.

One Shots
[x] dracofiend: Love's Curse (PG)

Completed Chapter Fic
[x] thesewarmstars: Property of the Half-Blood Prince (NC-17) (Warnings)

Works In Progress
[x] Pdantzler2: The House Which Time Forgot is now up to Chapter 12 (PG)
[x] dracofiend and the_con_cept: Those Who Are Vigilant (Part 1 of 8) (NC-17) (Warnings)
[x] eriador117: The Weight of Water is up to chapter 7 (NC-17)
[x] iulia_linnea: Getting Severus Married is up to chapter 40 (NC-17)
[x] softly_sweetly: Introduction and Inspection, part 2 of the Masquerade Universe (NC-17)
[x] tehopheliac: Letter's From The Inside is up to chapter 4 (Unrated)

Drabbles And Ficlets
[x] alisanne: Deep Fascination (PG)
[x] angela_snape: Final Preparations (PG)
[x] iulia_linnea: Bedrooms and Broomsticks (PG-13)
[x] joanwilder: Pre-Owned Insults (G)
[x] lilyseyes: Enraged Breath, another in the Breathe Series (NC-17)
[x] unbroken_halo: Long Words (R)

Miscellaneous
[x] esrodeyl: Is looking for Snarry fics in which they are interested in the Muggle world
[x] jennybliss: Is looking for infidelity Snarry fics in which Harry cheats on Ginny
[x] phoenixsonglove: Is looking for a Snarry reading partner
[x] snarry100: posted a new prompt, Random Insult Generator
[x] thedogberry: Is looking for lighthearted DH compliant Snarry fics

This Newsletter
[x] Send your Snape/Harry news to sshp.prophet@gmail.com!

::sigh:: Okay, lemme see if I can recreate my previous post.

I highly recommend the site Judaism 101 and especially its glossary. But, off the top of my head, here are some terms that I use fairly frequently that might have confounded folks.

( Cut for length )

That's all I can come up with just at the moment. Other Jews are welcome (even encouraged) to correct me or make additions to the list. (Really, if I haven't made at least one major mistake, I'll be shocked.) And folks are welcome to ask about any other terms that have confounded them.

Oh wonderful flist, once again I come to you on bended knee because my brain is fried. What did my client mean? Because, well, I'm pretty sure the bolded word isn't what he meant. (The context is a section on NGOs and aid agencies coming to Haiti with various agendas.)

Police officers, aid workers, animators, seminar specialists, healthcare workers, preachers, school teachers, justices of the peace, lawyers, professors...

Thoughts?

Argl. I wrote a nice long post yesterday about Hebrew and Yiddish words, with helpful links and everything. And then I didn't hit post and I managed to delete it. ::headdesk:: I'll try to do it again, but I don't know if I'll have time.

Meanwhile, in important medical news, the embryo transfer will be Monday morning. Whining will be on the whining filter later, if I can find the time and energy to even write it out.

Oh, and concerning Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog...c'mon, it's Joss, you didn't see that coming? Dude. I sure did. I mean, I love his shows but...yeah. ::sigh:: I did still enjoy it, though.

Now I must work, since I wasted half the morning shlepping down to Virginia to be poked and prodded.

( spoilers for SGA 5x02 )

In honor of the fact that my multi-fandom recs page is getting regular updates again, I've been making a concerted effort to ensure the links are, you know...working ones. However, given that I have close to a thousand recs at this point, the process is going fairly slowly.

If you want to help speed things up, feel free to check the links for your stories (or the stories of your BFF's) and let me know in a comment or by email (bethbethbeth at gmail) if you see any links that need changing.

Things awesome: the lovely, lovely, crack spawned in sister_wolf's post over here, with Redwing and Falcon and pterodactyls and dinosaurs and Steve Rogers and the Birds of Prey. Et cetera.

Things less awesome: my complete failure to have written my TV Tropes challenge fic, or anything else in the last few months, either.

(I've been tired and blocked lately, and my near-daily headaches are back. It's not been so great for the fic writing. Soon, I hope! There are so many exciting things to write! But not tonight, alas.)

I've got a little list, of people who won't be missed. And on that list, may I say, are people who set their website up thusly:

Content page blah blah blah, which has at the bottom...a nifty spifty link to something you need. When you click on that link, it takes you to another page, which is just a placeholder page for the actual link to the PDF or DOC or XLS or whatever.

Why? Why oh why? Why do they do this to me? (And yes, I'm at the stage of taking it personally.) I hate reading sites like that, and I hate mapping them even more. ::hates::

On a completely different note, it's entirely possible that I've been thinking too much about Doctor Who and Torchwood. Why, you might ask? Because Yael is watching Go, Diego, Go and he said "tortoise" and I looked up, expecting to see a blue police call box. ::headdesk::

(For the two or three of you who don't get it...never mind.)

Last night, I was lucky, because I got a heatherly for a few hours. We went out to dinner and talked and it was great. I need to get out more! Which is handy, because on Sunday, neotoma and I are going museuming. Whee!

Okay, must go pack a bag in case Yael stays at her grandparents' place tonight. Oh yeah, and we should probably pick something suitable to wear for Shabbat dinner. Hmm, which reminds me that at some point I want to do a post about Hebrew and Yiddish words I use all the time, assuming that everyone must know them. So, if you've ever seen me use a Judaism-related term and you'd like me to explain it, let me know.

Oh, but I had the most perfect day! I called in sick though, dear friends, I confess that I am not at all sick, just very tired. Or I was. I slept till 9:30 and took two big naps. But I also did some laundry, ironed, grocery shopped, worked in the garden, took a long walk, and washed the kitchen floor.

Today was just beautiful, too: the temperature was an unusually cool 76F/24C -- tomorrow it's supposed to back to normal -- and the breeze blew all day. I lay on the couch in the living room with all the windows and doors wide open and watched the trees toss their leaves, and I can practically hear the tomatoes growing.

Heaven. Just the day I needed. I've been so busy -- to my mother's in Phoenix, then to a meeting in LA, then running errands after work, and Webster's just starting to recover from a very bad time of it. I really needed a day to myself.

I also finished re-reading one of my favorite comfort books: Rosamunde Pilcher's Winter Solstice. If you know Pilcher, you know her novel The Shell Seekers, and she's written many others, but they really don't do much for me. I'm not sure why Winter Solstice does; it's just as cliched as the others, with just as predictable an outcome, but I do love this book and all its characters. Everyone is so nice in it; there are no villains (except life itself, which is unkind to everyone equally). Anyway, as they say on the internet, if it's the sort of thing you like, you'll really like this.

Other things I like:

» This is just darling: really cute pictures of John and Rodney enjoying Paris. Kind of.

» "Sincerity is the quality where your imperfections show."
--Edward Espe Brown.
Brown is the author of a number of cookbooks, and I ate at Greens restaurant back in the day when he was involved (amazingly good food). He's a funny guy, irritable and cranky but insightful and, I think, kind. I just saw a movie about him, How to Cook Your Life. It's not much of a movie: just the camera following him around while he teaches cooking and tries to meditate and is agonizingly honest about himself. I liked it. Here's what the San Francisco Chronicle thought of it. When I'm washing the rice, I really do try just to wash the rice, only I think of it as this breath right now. And this breath right now. And this breath right now.

(And here is a sample of Brown's way of zen, A Potato Chip Meditation.)

» Like everyone and her sister, I'm enjoying the hell out of Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, so much so that I actually purchased it from iTunes. I want to support more work like this.

And holy cow, but Neil Patrick Harris? Is adorable with a capital DOR.

» I've also been enjoying reading the reports about Shore Leave and especially about the Hewletts. Oh dear. Kate Hewlett just gets cuter and cuter. That smile! Those eyes! Those breasts! And does she know how to dress to her advantage. Wow.






Gosh, I'm sorry today is over. It really was almost perfect.

Or, as all Canadians secretly refer to themselves in their hearts, "godless communists."

I was looking at the banknotes of Canada in a friend's locked entry, and thinking how convenient it is to have a Queen: whenever someone on a banknote becomes historically embarrassing, and we have no ready substitute, we just stick Liz on it, let's be frank, she has a great face for coinage.* (Unlike some I won't mention, wtf.)

But can we agree to secede from the Commonwealth before Chuck wears the pointy hat? There is no graven image of that man I want to carry around in my pants.

* I would link to the mint website, but they are winning this month's Accessibility-Shmaccessibility! award with an all-Flash website.

::looks around:: How bizarre. I could have sworn I posted this morning, but I didn't. Which would explain why nobody responded to said nonexistent post.

::shakes head:: I don't even know what I thought I'd posted about. Brain not work so good today.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling like a sucky friend because I didn't go to thelesters' father's funeral this morning while Yael was in camp. ::hangs head:: i intended to. I even took out my funeral dress. And at the last minute, I couldn't deal. I don't know why going to the funeral freaked me out, when I've already arranged that Avi and I will make a shiva call on Sunday and stay for minyan. But I didn't go. And I suck.

Okay, must get some work done while Yael is watching Dora.

For the millionth year in a row, I can't go to Comic Con (*cries*), but I can report the news (...which was passed to me by a friend this morning)

So...Comic Con being located in San Diego, there are many hotels, but one of them - only a block away and therefore probably one of the most sought after - is the Manchester Grand Hyatt. The Manchester Grand Hyatt. Owned by Doug Manchester who just "donated $125,000 to help get Proposition 8, a measure that could amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, on the ballot" in California.

A list of all the nearby - and semi-nearby - hotels is here in case anybody's booked into the Grand Hyatt and suddenly feels disinclined to give Manchester their money.

***

In other news, I'm sure most of you have seen this already, but if not, LJ has announced they're planning on reintroducing Basic Accounts and they're soliciting input about how to go about it, including how to deal with the ad situation. I've got to say, while I still can't say I've been totally won back by LJ, the moves they've been making over the past months are very promising.

***

Also? I bid on - and won! - art from cluegirl in livelongnmarry! I'm very excited about this (...although I do feel slightly guilty about nudging Delta out of the way at the last minute. In my defense, I was going to place my last bid hours earlier and give her time for one final bid, but...um...I fell asleep and didn't wake up until the deadline was almost there)!

One Shots
[x] alisanne: Celebrating Neville Longbottom [R] Neville Longbottom/Bill Weasley Snape/Harry
[x] darkladyvamp: Coming Home [PG]
[x] leianora: The Cleansing of Albion [PG]
[x] rakina: Nowhere to Hide [NC-17]
[x] skyeblue_reverie: Boundaries [PG-13/R] Chan

Works In Progress
[x] celandineb: He Plays at Hazard, Chapter 8: Not Time's Fool [Adult]
[x] eriador117: The Weight of Water has been posted up to Chapter 6 [R/NC-17 overall]
[x] iulia_linnea: Getting Severus Married has been posted up to Chapter 40. [NC-17]
[x] kibatsu: Nights of Gethsemane is now posted up to chapter 42 [NC-17]

Drabbles And Ficlets
[x] alisanne: Exposed [PG]
[x] alisanne: Perfectly Positioned [PG-13]
[x] angela_snape: Joining Forces [G]
[x] bluestocking79: Detente [PG-13]
[x] lesyeuxverts: A Christmas to Remember [PG-13]
[x] liikii: Nameless [R]
[x] lilyseyes: Gasping Scowl [PG] Another in the Breathe series.
[x] pepper202: Severus Becomes Jealous [NC-17]
[x] potion_lady: Bloody Hormones [R]
[x] swtalmnd: Untitled Drabble [PG] Chan
[x] the_minx_17: Let Us Begin [PG]

Art And Icons
[x] chiakidark: Harry the Fiend or Severus' Enemy #1 [Teen]

Miscellaneous
[x] Harry Slash's Web Page is back in working order.
[x] bethbethbeth: Has updated her recs page with 12 new Snarry fics
[x] dracofiend: Is looking for final numbers for the Snarry meet-up at Terminus. Please sign up if you are planning to attend.
[x] snarry_holidays: Has posted rules and FAQs for its second round.
[x] stormbird85: Is looking for completed Snarry/Stargate crossovers

This Newsletter
[x] Send your Snape/Harry news to sshp.prophet@gmail.com!

My flist is (understandably) all aflutter over the news that the HHS is moving to define contraception as abortion based y'know, on polling data and religion, rather than on something stupid like, say, science.

I'm so full of incoherent rage over this and the New Yorker cover and my own life, and so I'll spare you my rage and just give you the one piece of good news in all this abortion/contraception stupidity:

Think about it...if pregnancy begins at fertilization, then I'm already pregnant and thus I can refuse to do IVF. ::coughs:: I mean, they don't say anything about where the fertilized egg is, do they? I'm all about the technicalities.

Seriously, though, for the record: CONTRACEPTIVES ARE NOT ABORTIONS. You're welcome to believe that abortions are murder, no matter when they occur. I don't agree, but I can understand your point of view. But the pill is NOT abortion. Deal. I don't care what you believe in your gut, the science says you're an idiot.

I think I'm going to follow a few other folks' lead and turn comments off. Normally I might like to debate this issue, but I'm tired and cranky and full of rage and I don't have the time to reply to anyone. ::goes back to (coincidentally) editing a 400-page book on fertility in Haiti::

I'm sorry if I've offended anyone. Really, I am. I just feel like crap, and the news isn't helping me any.

Kaliningrad is lovely. The three days of my stay here have been very enjoyable. In the evenings while my friend is drinking with his other friends, I read, a little.

( One piece of old classics, Poe no Ichizoku )

What's it with the brief emergency maintenances, eh? It's early in the morning and I need my LJ fix to start the day properly. ARGH!!

::coughs:: Okay, I've been sitting at my laptop since dinner ended, about two hours ago. And in that time, I think I've gotten maybe fifteen minutes of work done. If it's not my daughter crying or the DVR making a simple task complicated, it's my rassumfrassum computer acting up.

I think i just need to reboot, because first Citrix was locking up, and now (after I logged off and decided to just edit), Word is doing things like insisting I can't get to the endnotes. I was working with them not two hours ago, but now Word just sits there and says "Haha! I won't let you edit them! You can see them if you run the mouse over the number, and I'll tantalize you by showing you typos, but you're not allowed to edit them!"

::headdesk::

Okay, I'm going to take a break, reboot, and see if I can get something done before bedtime.

Only a few hours left to bid, but I finally stopped wibbling and offered something. Take that, commitment phobia.

Offering fanart and fic at livelongnmarry.

*crawls back under rock*