I have not written to you, Livejournal says, in MONTHS.
And I think, no, this cannot be. I check my flist every day! I keep up with the doings of you all! We have arguments about Robert Pattinson and google wave and gender fuckery in the new Star Trek movie!
And then my brain reminds me that those took place on Twitter, and IM, and in my head, and last year. And that reading the people on my flist who I literally haven't spoken to in months is, y'know, kind of stalkerish.
But it is Christmas! And I am feeling happy and generous. So I have gifts for you, from my long absence!
SOME MUSIC: Barenaked Ladies: Barenaked For The Holidays It's Christmas music! It's actually the only Xmas music I have on my harddrive. (Some of it is Hanukkah music.) It's often funny.
SOME STORIES: A week ago, I accidentally started reading fanfic again. I went for oooooldies, though. So, four stories at least four years old that you should read (Even if you don't know the fandom. Maybe as an introduction to the fandom): Teeth of the Hydra, by Resonant (due South); Face Value, by minnow (Stargate: Atlantis); Girl, by Viridian5 and Maya Tawi (Weiss Kreuz); Lust Over Pendle, by AJ Hall (Harry Potter). All of these are fandoms, stories, and authors I have loved. There are so many more of those. (Fandoms you did not get recs in: The Sentinel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander, and so many more. In large part, be glad of that.)
SOME CUTENESS: Because who doesn't need this to round out their day? Puppy anna duck!!!!!
SOME PLANS: My plane touches down, dear ladies of my acquaintance, at Midway airport on December the 19th, that is to say one week from right nos. Chicago crew, I expect to see some representation. (I'm around until January 8th. I will be out of town for New Year's.) WHAT SAY WE ALL?
SOME MEMAGE: Because I like this one, and I'm avoiding doing my paper (can you tell?)
a) Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/). b) Using ONLY the first page, pick an image. c) Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. (Change rows to 3 and columns to 3.) (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php) d) Save the image and post it!
The Questions: 1. What is your first name? 2. What is your favourite food? 3. What is your favourite colour? 4. Favourite band? 5. Dream vacation? 6. Favourite hobby? 7. What you want to be when you grow up? 8. What do you love? 9. One word to describe you.
I have a new residence! As soon as said residence has internet access, and is put together enough to be presentable, I'll probably even upload pictures of it.
I've moved from a faceless apartment complex in the hinterlands of town to an ancient rental house two blocks east of main street. There are five bedrooms, two living rooms, a laundry room with washer and drier, a hand-dug limestone basement with ceiling so low not one of you could stand up straight in it, a brand new kitchen, two roommates, and more quirky little nooks and corners than you can find in any few days of living there. I love it buckets and buckets.
My mom came down to help me move like I needed it. I'd thought it was probably at least as much about checking in on me, after the disaster of this summer. Turns out, it had more to do with taking the opportunity to demand I explain myself to her one more time.
I've had a hellish summer. Hey I've had a hellish week. I think I've learned more about myself and more true things about life in this one summer, though, than the past howevermany hellish years put together.
I am pro-happiness! I am pretty sure that happiness is incipient! So my life, right now, is pretty cool. Yay life. Yay new house. Yay updates. Yay, you guys.
Well, actually, a playlist for me, but I thought I'd share. I've been playing with the idea of doing this for ages, just, a playlist of songs to express what this past year has meant, and then last night suddenly it all clicked and came together.
The musical coherency is maybe a little lacking, since I picked songs more for theme than flow, but all the music in it's good. This is as much 'songs I was listening to a lot at the given time' as 'songs that retroactively express how I felt'.
Download it here. Track list and...liner notes, I guess? under the cut.
Ok, guys, no spoilers here. Suffice to say that last night I marathonned all five episodes with my friend Hayley, and I've been pondering various facets all day. Ironically, coming home, the first few posts about it on my flist were all people going, "Eh, didn't do it for me", but maaaaan, it totally did it for me.
The last few months have hit me hard in the fannish squee department, but I think I may be just a little bit fixed. Because now I am craving Torchwood fic. Good stuff, kinda dark stuff, Jack/Ianto, Gwen and Rhys and the team as its own little family, just, mmmm. I so hope I can sustain this, especially through what I'm sure is the upcoming wave of miniseries-related fics. Because I want epic plotty fics that address miniseries canon now.
(I never had this problem when I was in, say, Buffy, and seasons behind everyone else. The long plotty episode-related fics were written well before I ever hit the episode. See me pout.)
So, any of you who've been following my Twitter already may have an inkling of this, but just to keep us all up to date: after last Friday and Saturday of sheer hell, in the middle of a disaster of uncontrollable mood swings, including some pretty intense terror and more than a few extra-special self-destructive urges, I went ahead and checked myself into the emergency room. They in turn got me checked in to the lovely Stormont-Vail Mental Health Facility, where I spent three straight days. Thus ends the worst week of my life.
A note about bipolar: It's pretty damn scary. Even bipolar II. Mixed states....there are a whole bunch of different ways mixed states can pop up, I've discovered, and not one of them is pretty. The classic mixed state is all of the energy of a hypomanic or true manic episode, all wound up so tight inside you that you feel like something's about to snap, and you jitter and fidget with this high thrum of anxiety that you can't really calm or control. You're upset, maybe even miserable, and you're miserable about a whole lot of things, because your thoughts won't stop going. You talk fast, sometimes really fast, you need to do something with all the energy you've got or you'll explode, but if you touch anything you're afraid you'll break it, and maybe that's exactly what you want to do, break something. Mixed states suck.
A note about mental health hospitals: They're pretty damn wretched. You can't be trusted with yourself; if you could, you wouldn't be there, after all. You're crazy, which means you can't be allowed any choices of your own, because who knows what you might do with them. You can't be trusted with privacy, or cords, or access to the outside world unless it's Carefully Monitored. You can't be trusted with the other patients. You're encouraged to socialize and be friendly, but only up to a point. It breeds a tight community of gossip and bitterness against the nurses, who're as inconsistent at policy as they are attitude. Some of them are downright patronizing, but at least you know which ones to watch out for then. Even with the nice ones, though, the ones that might let you have a plastic knife to cut your ham at dinner, instead of the side of a plastic spoon (so long as you're carefully watched the whole time, of course, heaven knows what could happen with a plastic knife), it's constantly, consistently obvious that any free will they let you have, they can take away at any time at their own discression.
Another note about mental health hospitals: Sometimes, they're worth it. Because they make you better. They make you get better as fast as you can, they make the outside world seem not so bad, just so you can get the fuck out of there. They dehumanize you until you remember why you're so damned determined to be human. They get you on meds and they get you stable, they keep you safe even when you don't want to be, even when you hate them for it. They're safe. And if you're fucked up enough to need one, it will make you better. Maybe not GOOD, but it'll also teach you this: life's never without risk, life's never assured capital-G GOOD. It'll make you better enough that you can survive trying to get there.
In conclusion, lithium rules, and so does casual nudity in the privacy of your own home at 8:00 on a Tuesday night. And so do you guys. I miss you. <3 <3.
I love my family and I need to GTFO of this house tomorrow. I know Empires is Friday, but is anyone up for hanging or doing things tomorrow or Thursday?
In the middle of the day would probably be best, since getting home these days is a tricky proposition at best; either I need to be on the L by like 8 so I don't have to wake up my mom to get me from the train, or I probably need to have a ride worked out ahead of time. (I am making an exception for Friday. I needs it.) Who's free when? The suburbs will kill me quickly, these days.
INTP - "Architect". Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.
Okay. I've slept! Since monday. Twice, even. It ruled. I also got a shipment of Threadless t-shirts in the mail while I was gone, and took my ears up a gauge. (To 12. I have teensy, tiny baby ears. Shut up.) And I've taken a final, edited a whole bunch of projects for my final portfolio in my Scientific Illustration class, and gotten a lecture over going home at the beginning of the summer to "get whatever it is you need to get out of your system" and coming back actually ready to work. It has been a week! And still, only two days.
So! This weekend, Team I Hate The idwest, AKA the middle-of-fucking-nowhere auxilliary of Team Chicago/the Chi-Town City Rollers, aka me and fallingfortruth , got ourselves the fuck out of Kansas and Oklahoma, and off to the magical land of New Jersey: a place of real pizza, where you can curse in public and not get publically stoned. A place where sitting on a bus or train isn't considered automatic grounds for complete strangers to assault you with polite conversation. A place of rock.
We left after new Found Glory, even though I'm pretty sure Badfish was still going on; it was wet, we'd all had excessively long days of travel, and wanted nothing more than food of some description, so we hit a diner, then crashed in the hotel room around one or two for a relatively early night. We'd need it the next day. Oh, boy howdy would we. (Dun-dun-duuuunnnnn.......)
Next time, on Weekend Festival Theater: Jac Vanek is an epic failcake! Gabe Saporta is a crazyface full of awesome! With Forgive Durden doing Razia's Shadow, Fall Out Boy doing far too much, no, really, and Push Play doing very little of any interest at all. Guest starring the sun, in its special, one-day-only appearance!
Concert recaps at some later date when I'm semi-coherent. I have class at seven. My friend Liz brought me home after I took a final this afternoon to sleep, because I almost dozed off on an eviscerated mink. Which is exactly as pleasant as it sounds.
I am not actually going to get time to sleep, because I want dinner and also I want a shower more than words can adequately express. But.
Bamboozle was amazing. next year, more of you should come. There will probably be camera-phone scavenger hunts for pics of band members and hipsters in truly tragic outfits and the best tattoo you can find over the three days. And greasy food. And total lack of sleep. As y'do.
Seriously, recaps later. Suffice to say it kicked ass.
I want an hourglass on the back of my neck, for commitment and permanence and irrevocable decisions and life (and death). I've been playing with overly complex variations on the theme for long past that idiotic 'one year' rule, but this feels right, simplified, the right place, the right time. And I want to get it done in Chicago before I go back to Kansas next month.
So. Who's got a favorite tattoo shop they'd just love to tell me about, and who's coming with?
For those of you who're a little behind the ball (I love you all and it is possible that I could've been more obvious), I am home. In Chicago. This week. Like, right now.
So, ok. The doting mother-of-mine has taken off of work on Wednesday and Thursday, which means that W and Th during the day, I'm Officially Claimed (*sigh*). Also, tomorrow night is Day Of Family And Guinness Bought By Dad. Joyful.
So tomorrow afternoon, Chex and I are gonna get stuff inked and/or pierced, as y'do, before I head down to see the Great Extended Irish Clan of mine. I am in point of fact free during all of tomorrow. I would love to go shopping for messenger bags, if someone else is free; if not, Chex and I will go after she gets out of class. It'll rule.
Wednesday and Thursday night, I am all kinds of free. Give me a plan and a time. If there is show-ness, I is THERE.
Friday I'm promised to miss greyandgrey after she gets out of her last final, so I'll be in Hyde Park. After that, I'm missing SI, sadly. I'm going to see Watchmen in Imax at Navy Pier with the college roomies. So I'm yours entirely until 8 pm Friday.
Guys, I know fandom can be wanky at times. I know it can sometimes be ridiculous. I know sometimes, we all want to throw up our hands in despair over the latest kerfluffle, be it as big as Cassie Claire, or as little as some third-tier Medium Name Fan cutting down her flist. I've been here for eight years, guys, I know and feel your pain. And tonight I tell you: you are not alone.
That's right, girls and boy-things, the secret they don't want you to know. Grownup, published, respected academics, men and women with PhD's and their actual names attached, are just like you, me, and the fifteen-year-old girls on FFN. Their egos are precisely as big. The academic wankstars have just as many fanpoodles as any BNF you've seen. Their writing is exactly as bad.
I know you find this hard to believe. "Sure, Claire, that's awesome hyperbole, and I totally buy that academics can be really wanky, in their own, upscale, hidden-in-pretty-jargon way, they argue for a living," you say. No, say I. I mean, well, yes, duh, but no.
For instance, several months ago, a wank broke out. A couple of paleontologists sent papers off for beta'ing editing to the Museum of New Mexico. These papers were beta-scooped and plagarised, and the OP's flist -- I'm sorry, the original authors' friends and collaborators -- called 'troll'. To quote, "We are aware of scientific publications emanating from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science which appear to usurp the work of others without credit. We have documented these issues as clearly as possible and invite the wider fannish scientific community to decide for themselves whether our complaints are valid or not."
That's old news, though. And what do you expect from a science whose golden age in the US involved a couple of syphilitic arch-rivals in such an epic competition to name dinosaurs, discover new species, and Conquer The West that they used to hire bandits to hijack each others' train shipments? Science. It's more exciting than you think.
But wait, there's more! You see, flist, today I saw a paper on rattlesnakes. I saw it, and I thought of you.
I need to link to it here, my dear flist. I cannot properly convey just how the author uses this article (a paper written to re-organize the naming of American rattlesnakes, from two genuses to nine) to intersperse science with long digressions about himself, his business, and his political views, without showing you the whole thing. A fair part of the main body, what ought to be his research results, is vaguely reasonable science, chronic misuse of 'it's' aside. I say 'a fair part'; for the really interesting bits, read his 'Etymology' sections about the names for new genera. As a basic scale, note that in a normal description paper, the 'Etymology' customarily contains a few sentences about why your new group's namesake deserves to be honored.
That said, there are two entirely un-customary sections at the end of this paper. And those, dear flist, those deserve to be shared in their entireity. ( A reclassification of the Rattlesnakes; species formerly exclusively referred to the Genera Crotalus and Sistrurus. ) I am not really sure what my favorite part is. It might be the, 'Banning our children from playing with venomous snakes will make them do drugs!' But I think it has to be the 'plagiarisation...and illegal rigging of online hotel competitions'.
You guys, if you only read one scientific paper this year? Make it this one.
This man is a fruit loop of the highest order. And all due respect to my Aussie friend? Take him back. We've already got enough to do here, just dealing with Joe Collins -- the man who releases pet store lizards on the sly, then publishes papers about the new population he discovered, eight months later.
Y'all know the drill by now. People gave me things. Comment asking, and I will give you things. Herein, find tl;dr and excessive gushing, topped off with a good dollop of TMI.
Wow, that was way more personal stuff than this meme needed. Damnit. I'mma go hide in a corner now. This is what happens when I show my face on the internet again.
Oh, and on that note, I'm going to be in Chicago from the afternoon of Monday the 16th through the morning of Saturday the 23rd. Planning should commence now. </div>
I want someone to talk about Burn Notice with. Because, guys, it's this show. It's this awesome amazing show full of sexiness and guns and explosions and plots that I can't always predict when the episode starts. And things that go boom. And sexiness. And a sexy sexy female lead who likes to make things go boom.
I am willing to discuss any and all episodes up to current in the comments, but what I really want to do is wave my hands and flail, because being in bandom for so long has spoiled me. See, I'm used to knowing who the authors in play are--the ones you read anything they post; the ones you read for content and wince past the grammar; the ones you befriend and then demand to be allowed to beta for, etc. etc. So now I'm all, "Aaargh Burn Notice must have more, hey, maybe there's fic, maybe there's good hot sexy sweaty Michael/Fiona/Sam three-way fic, maybe it has guns and explosions, or just sex, or---where is the fic?" And I've lost, like, 90% of my new-fandom-fu over the course of spending almost (and damn this is unheard of) TWO YEARS nigh-exclusive in bandom.
Anyone know where the good stuff is lurking? Is there any, yet? crack_van 's without recs, and I've forgotten where else I used to go.
(Please note: I am linking this video for parody only. The people on this video are not actually right. I can explain why, if you've got questions. I say this because you know there are people out there who don't get the joke.)
Since apparently half of my beloved girlposse does not read my journal (*glares*) (or my Twitters) and ergo had no idea I was arriving in Chicago yesterday afternoon, a recap.
Yesterday thru the 28th: here. In Chicago. I'm doing family stuff on Xmas and Xmas eve, and probably at other junctures, but I'm not sure when. I am going to the Empires show. I don't think I'm going to the Hushies tonight, though. I was too finals-swamped to go ahead and buy tickets, and I am still sick; I'd kinda like to go out to dinner with my parents and make them buy me good Italian that I don't have to make myself.
I am going to Empires. For total sure. You all should, too.
I have not yet bought Xmas presents. At all. For anyone. I need to do A LOT of that. If anyone wants to go shopping with me (down town, or at any of various malls: we could theoretically get a ride to Oak Brook or Woodfield, even, if we plan it early), speak now.
The 28th thru the 3rd: I am in Madison, Wisconsin, doing New Year's with the ex-roomies. If you're in Madison, we should have lunch while they're at work, but pretty much I'm out-of-state those days.
The 3rd thru the 6th: Back in Chicago! I've got a plane out early the 6th, but there's a couple of days in there and a couple of people I require the seeing of. (Molly, I'm looking at you.) Again, I am open to options. The less outdoors, the better.
I get home the afternoon of December 18th, guys. It's time to start making plans
(I'm in Wisconsin for some undefineable group of days between Christmas and New Year's, but I'll probably be back around the 2nd or so). I go back to Kansas on the 6th. GROUP TIMES MUST BE PLANNED.
Empires, I hear, is playing on the 21st, so I'm going to that. I do not however know who else is playing when that I might want to go see. I am open to suggestions. Wide, wide, wide open. I need me some live music, bitchez.
Also I need to go Xmas shopping because Lawrence fails hardcore at providing me with fun shopping opportunities of any non-suicidal-making kind.
It was this or subject you guys to "Ramifications of K Versus r Selection on the Ecological Stability of Vampires By Population". Twilight, guys. It's done bad things to my brain and I need to throw so many things at vampires in my head to fix it. Like science, and porn.
...for anyone on my flist who actually wants to read about K and r selection in vampires, you are a sick, sick person, and also, it will probably be up later this week.
Rows of Houses, All Bearing Down On Me
I feel like I've been locked up tight
A long long time ago, I can still remember how many of you people out there
Put your hands on the wheel don't worry about one thing we're not gonna take it.
Pop you've been shot you're sure you want to be with me, i've nothing to give
i walk a lonely road i really want you look at me my reflection, dirty mirror you've gotten crushed i'm just gonna shout this one: in and out of love i'm about to break
The hardest part: figuring out the first line to the Dandy Warhol's "Alien" when, apparently, the lyrics to that album are nowhere online to cheat from. I do not know where half the music on my iPod comes from, swear to god.
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