burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

( gym )

***

The HUCTW union stopped by today.  I was reminded of us joking after Durgin Park yesterday about "first world problems."  I mean, I appreciate that I get generous vacation &etc., but it feels so weird that this cushy middle-class job is unionized.

I got my stimulus check today.  Which I will use to pay my brother the rest of the money I owe him.  I know, exciting.

I made real food for dinner -- okay, it was a pack of Barilla pasta (porcini mushroom tortellini), so all I had to do was boil water, but still, it wasn't my usual lightly toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter.  I was gonna do frozen vegetables of some sort, too, but didn't -- which I was grateful for when I hadn't even finished my plate and was full.  According to the package, one package has four servings.  Oops?  (I would say "two" servings, myself.)

I also did a little bit of cleaning around the house, which was good.

I created a facebook Event for my birthday party (Saturday, July 12, noon until whenever).  Deciding whom to invite is stressful -- Do I invite people I know won't be able to make it (either because they have conflicts or because of distance)? What about local people I'm not that close to (anymore)? etc..  And of course not everyone's on facebook, so I'll have to send some regular invitations, too.  (Er, and by "regular invitations" I guess I mean direct e-mails.)

***

maechi made me an icon per my request :)  Technically, she made 3.  I'm debating which one I like best and/or if I wanna request any changes.  ( Thoughts? )

* It got down into the 60's overnight!  Awesome.

* I am still so happy about Amy's news from yesterday.

* I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, Will told me the Name Sign he'd thought up for me -- a book opening, but with the halves of the book looking like the E sign.  How perfect is that?

* We watched "In God We Trust" (tWW 6.20) today.  I like Vinick a lot.

* Katie read me my Onion horoscope, and it is MADE OF AWESOME.
"You've never really been concerned with the plight of the giant panda, but that was before you found out about panda porn."

* MaryAlice informs me that M&M/Mars backtracked almost immediately on the animal rennet thing.  (Apparently DemocraticUnderground was all over this issue.  Hi, my flist fails at vegetarianism.)  This is especially good as I've been wanting chocolate lots recently.  Possibly a response to stress?  I don't really know.

* fox1013 made "gay patron saint" Katie Heigl icons.
::ponders which icon I could swap out for the next three months::

* Eric informed me that the e-mail from the union titled "Final Ratification Election results" (which I thusly ignored) also had a macroed spreadsheet for calculating your new salary.
The "structural increase" is 2.6%, then there's a "progression increase," so ultimately I get a 5.64% increase.  Whee, money!  (This also makes me feel better about all the money I'll be spending on Europe.)
    I actually almost included the actual numbers of my current salary and my new salary, 'cause it felt natural, but then I felt awkward, like it would be uncomfortable for readers, flaunting how much I make [which is not huge in the grand scheme of things, but with a flist full of students and temp workers....].

* I think this is the third day this week that I've heard bagpipes at Harvard Square on my way to the T.

* Eric texted me: "Theyre opening a qdoba at harvard sq."

* dinner at Firefly

I actually had gaydar for once and pinged my waiter as he came over.  "May I ask where you got your necklace?" conversation confirmed it.
And the fact that I was having dinner by myself meant I got to listen to his repartee with all the other customers.
P.S. He said his name is Randy, which of course I think is unfortunate.  But yes, otherwise, fabulous.

I was sad that they didn't have the white sangria I had passed on last time, but I ordered the red sangria.
When my $13 mushroom crepes arrived I initially felt put out that there was so not enough food to merit that price, but they were really yummy, plus I was still full five hours later, so bravo.

On my way out I noticed a rack of free periodicals, including BayWindows, MetroSource, stuff@night, and some others I didn't recognize/pick up.

* Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink ( Okay, so this part -- the play, and the socializing associated with it -- is actually kinda mediocre. )

***

Oh, and on Thursday, I got a mass e-mail from Sen. Patricia Jehlen (to all the people who had written to her about the amendment), and near the end she writes:

Why not "Let the people vote?"

Many people had asked that we not use parliamentary procedure to delay a vote.  This did not happen.

Many people believed that the vote was on "letting the people vote."  It was not.  It was a vote on the merits of the amendment.  The question before us was, "Not less than one-fourth of all the members elected to the Senate and House of Representatives, in joint session, hereby, declares it to be expedient to alter the Constitution by the adoption of the following Article of Amendment, to the end that it may become part of the Constitution."

Our constitution allows for amendments proposed by the legislature to move forward with majority support in two successive conventions.  But initiative petitions like this one face a lower barrier: they require only a quarter of the legislature to approve.  Still, the framers clearly did not intend the legislature to be a rubber stamp.  (At the end of this letter, I'm adding the Herald's editorial on this topic.)

In fact, since 1919, the legislature has been presented with nine citizen initiative petitions for constitutional amendments.  Of the nine, only three were advanced to the voters by the legislature.

[...]

Yeah, you better believe I'm forwarding that to Joe F.

I was told it was going to snowstorm on Thursday.  Instead we got rain.

I knew Saturday was predicted to be a high of 50 and that that would feel warm after the temps we'd been having, but when I left my parents' house around 11am to go to the library, dressed in fairly light clothes, I thought it was astonishingly warm out.  When I got home to Somerville and checked weather.com at 4pm it said the current temp was 55F, so I wonder how warm it actually was then in Norwood.

Now we're back to winter temps for a while, which I'm okay with.

*

NHS has a cappella now?  My dad went to a performance on Friday while my mom and I went to Singspiration.

Naifee and Isabel both called me "Barbara" (my mom's name).  And the guy who gave me a ride home (JoeF's insistence, though I'd resigned myself to that in advance) asked me how old I was and when I told him said I looked much younger.  Yeah, I know.  Le sigh.

There were some hymns I liked -- e.g. "Shine, Jesus, Shine."
Four out of the eight 770's were requested.  They're in the "Everlasting Fellowship || Eternal Life and Heaven" section.  I obviously have issues with these.  The "Won't it be wonderful to leave this world" sentiment obviously troubles me, and at the same time most everyone regardless of religious beliefs seems very opposed to dying (and not even the suffering likely to accompany it but the actual dying -- c.f. JoeF's "Horse sense teaches about compassion and dignity") which seems very hypocritical to me.

*

My aunt's nursing program graduation is the same date as Smith graduation.  I'm okay with choosing Reunion and all that entails over seeing the immediate extended family but am miffed that I can't do both.

Does LJ do automatic IP address reading or something?  'Cause I went to log in to LiveJournal Friday night and the main page was showing me Westwood, MA classifieds.

links:
* (via escritoireazul): brynwulf has a poll up checking interest in a post-apocalyptical panfandom fic archive.
* Hi, I might be buying the next GQ -- for the Katie Heigl photoshoot.
* Which reminds me, 1968 topless Judi Dench.
* mind controlling pigeons, by remote control
* "Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein"

MaryAlice told me on Thursday that Wash (Alan Tudyk) was in 28 Days.  I remember recognizing Azura Skye (BtVS 7.04) in that, so I'm not sure how I didn't recognize Wash.

P.S. maechi made me a Kitty Pryde Ravenclaw icon which I like muchly :)

Wow, my October is filling up. I think I'm gonna end up getting Kieslowski from MLN rather than watching it at the MFA. Smithies: Is there good time in November for me to visit? (Sidenote: Massachusetts fan cons in November. Also, Common Rotation is at Club Passim -- Harvard Square -- Sat. Nov. 11.)

*

omg, I am such a stalker. It's possible I should be ashamed of this.

Eric sent me an e-mail forward and of course I had to check the full To list, and of course Adrien was on there, and it was a yahoo address and of course I googled it and found her fanworks page and lo a LiveJournal as well (though it's almost entirely fannish, and she does indeed do anime/manga -- i.e., fandoms I have no familiarity with).

( In which Elizabeth is neurotic. )

This was written this morning. I think my sanity has returned, for the time being anyway.

*

I was looking at icon comms for the first time in a while and snagged this one from naughtyelf and was then browsing her journal and this entry... I'm sorry, I'll return when I finish being ded from sex.

::revives::

I had already learned that IMDb has beautiful promo shots of the Heroes stars, but just today learned of the existence of heroes_icons [via TBQ].

*

In other news... the morning's mail included a flyer for "The Little Prince Teacher: Assessing Your Management Style." ("This workshop uses an original video interpretation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic story, The Little Prince, to help managers identify and assess their management style.")

FormerUnitHead ran through his schedule for the next few days (it includes "Flying to Chicago to help my daughter build a loft in her dorm room") and ended with "I'll be in mid-day Monday. Monday's a Jewish holiday, but I assume we'll be in full bloom here." Sorry, "full bloom" just amused me. [I also find myself thinking of the Nirvana song, which is just weird.]

Beautiful beautiful landscape icons here.

SmoothieGuy was in hiding this morning, but Amanda got me a 7-11 cinnamon roll (was more like a glazed donut, but that's okay) as a thank you for my help these past couple weeks, and I ended up not being hungry again until late in the day.

I learned from Amanda that Green Line service to Lechmere restored as of this past Saturday -- though it's only the E line that goes out that far.

She also shared amusing stories about her cat, Milo, and I'm not a cat person, but I was still muchly amused.

I was realizing last night that I didn't watch WWE this past Friday.  (Though honestly, I only watch on occasion and am usually bored by most of it.)  Then I heard from Jackie that Eddie Guerrero died (yesterday).  I hated the storylines they've had him in, but damn.  Eddie is survived by his wife Vickie and daughters Shaul, 14, Sherilyn, 9, and Kaylie Marie, 3.  The official site, of course, does not talk about his history of drug and alcohol abuse, which I found through GoogleNews, but supposedly he'd been sober for 4 years.  Age 38, damn.  That seems so young to be dead, though for an active wrestler that seems old to still be pushing your body like that.

Not safe for work 'cause i m ded from laughter: this thread from stultiloquentia's list of overused words/phrases in Spuffy smut.

tkp's guilty pleasures in fanfic comment thread is also at times very amusing -- e.g. this thread with dlgood on Angel's Felix Unger-ness and this comment from tkp about the usage of "orbs" for eyes.

Lovely: icons of Patrick's Rune ("all these I place between myself and the power of darkness") from A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle

As an offshoot of the misogyny, femslash, etc., debates, people have been posting lists of their favorite female characters -- frequently with explanations.  I decided I should probably participate/contribute, and predictably it has turned into more discussing than listing, so I suspect that's what I'll be occupying myself with this week when work is slow.  Am wondering whether I should just discuss the characters that particularly ping with me or if I should also include the kick-ass women I find appealling and/or great to watch.  Also: what about the ones who are great in theory even if canon doesn't particularly realize them as such *cough*Hermione*cough* ? [Also: Must try so hard to be true to spirit of meme and not go off on tangents about why assorted female characters don't particularly do it for me.]

Oh, and Meg asks, What does the word "theraputic" mean to you? What are its implications? Don't go look it up, just respond, and run with it.

Waiting for the Red Line at South Station Saturday evening, there was this guy who was chatting with his friends and also bantering with these other people sitting between them and me.

Guy: "You are all invited to a party tonight, provided you bring boys for me to make out with."
Person between us: "Hmm.  Most of the boys I know who make out with boys and are available are available for a reason."

BetweenPerson also had an anime party to go to that night.  Oh it is good to feel like I am around my people.  (I don't even do anime, but it was familiar and thus comforting.)

I'd been considering taking in a matinee showing of Serenity this coming Saturday with trijinx and wondering if I could rope anyone from work into going.  But on the Red Line I saw an ad for the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival (10am-6pm that day) which I went to once while I was in high school and which had lots of free food samples.  It's at the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center -- near the Roxbury Crossing Orange Line stop.

Not that I can't do both, of course.

Oh bugger, I totally missed some of the Huntington stuff I wanted to see.  Not that I would have had time to see it anyway.

Must remember that I wanna see:
     STAGED READINGS OF PLAYS AT WORK
     Constant by David Valdes Greenwood
     November 5 @ 4:00 PM & November 6 @ 7:00 PM
     http://www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/production.aspx?id=1950&src=t

Things I am on the wrong coast to see include: OMWF as live musical.  I keep thinking Queer Soup, but I suspect this will be an actual professional job.
      Ooh, La Llorona.  (Which reminds me of the Weeping Woman lesbian YA novel I read some years back, and then of course prompts a sudden desire to read variants on the story and then write a version myself.)  21 Taras and a Burlesque are also obvious yays.

Anyway.

Layna's party last night was lovely. Met good new people, as I tend to do at her parties.

Terri [name spelling corrected thanks to Layna's post] had a pink sparkly button that said "Ooh, Shiny," and I asked if it was a generic fannish thing or a Firefly thing and she said it functions as both and we chatted about Whedonverse some and that was happy.

Chris had a button that said "My name is Harry Potter.  You killed both my parents.  Prepare to die." which I loved and also a "First they came for the verbs . . ." one which made my brain hurt ("First they came for the verbs and I said nothing, for verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns and I speech nothing, for I no verbs."  Google tells me it's Peter Ellis on alt.fan.pratchett)

We played Cranium, which I learned I am rather indifferent to (I had never played before) and Apples to Apples, which I quite like.  A disagreement arose during the game, so of course I turn to LJ to help resolve the dispute.

[Poll #591844]

(A different card altogether won the round, so this poll is merely for the vindication of certain players.)

Random joyous/fannish things:

No one told me (until today) that Serenity: The Official Visual Companion also contains a shooting script for the movie.  *wants*  (Why does MLN not have this in stock?  Tried VirtCat, and it gives me a placeholder entry for CMARS.  Sigh.)

There are great Serenity movie icons here (fourth to last is amazing).  Spoilers, duh.

caladan_dd did a couple fanarts to The Curse of Chalion.  Love the second one -- the headshot.  Am now tempted to read the book.  'Cause I don't have enough to read already.  *rolls eyes at self*

And I'm sure everyone's seen the b&w of Nathan Fillion looking hot in EW, but it's worth mentioning again.

People are starting to post advance warnings for Fandom Secret Santa signups -- Secret Slasha, yuletide, btvs_santa, serenity_santa, vm_santa, etc.  Am fairly certain I don't wanna sign up for any of them as I have so much on my plate already, though it feels weird to not even do Secret Slasha.

Must also reread "Greece Remembers" to decide if I really am submitting it for Uninvited.

I never did pimp sexonastick's ambiguous consent challenge, did I?  I am falling down on the job.

I need to watch Night Watch at some point just for this scene.

And I think I'm done for the moment.

Is Lily (Evans Potter) a redhead in canon? If so, why did I never notice that when reading the books?

Also: mosquitoverse.com
A Firefly tribute/parody heavily based on the “Making Of” DVD featurette. Hysterical and brill. I have one complaint that I am trying to pass off as an extension of the exaggerative nature of parody.

Ari? Do you or anyone else have Fred/Wes recs to give Rana?

And: Child "Pirates, Tea Parties, and other Fae creatures" (65 icons)

So everyone’s back at Smith now, right? Though almost everyone I care about had already returned -- or wouldn't be returning this year (e.g. Liz-in-Germany, Class of '05, etc.). (Come to think of it, anyone know if Lez is back this semester?)

I miss Smith people. And they miss me, which is something I’m still getting used to.

Late-night AIM conversations are bad ‘cause I have to get up at 6:20am. (Yeah, beat that, bitches.) I think I might actually crash tonight, which will hopefully get my body back into a normal sleep cycle. The problem is that I like the people whom I actually like, and realtime conversation is nice, so unless I’m seriously tired I’m probably not gonna cut latenight IMs short.

Paige mentioned my big crossover fic and damn, the dark and the allusion-making!River... I hadn’t realized how similar this is to the darkfic I just wrote -- probably ‘cause I wrote the crossover back in March.

We talked about Sessions (duh, I hadn’t realized the first and final released sessions were halves of the same session). I need to watch them in numbered order now instead of release order. And I’d forgotten what it would be like to watch them not knowing the canon, to not know the extent of what they do to her.

wisdomeagle wrote Dawn/Tara and reading the comments has been funny ‘cause so many are surpriseish and (a) Dawn and Tara are the biggest sluts on my recs page (with Lilah possibly tying -- oh, it occurs to me that I should figure out a way to include poly and crossover stories on the character pages) and I primarily femslash both of them (though my Tara -- and Dawn -- is BI!), (b) I read Dawn/Tara as practically canon at least in so far as Dawn has a crush on Tara and they have a very close, tender relationship, (c) I will never forgive Willow for S6, so breaking up Willow/Tara is totally not a problem for me, because after probably “Tabula Rasa” I thought Tara was too good for Willow and actively did not want them together (unless Willow reformed, which she didn’t, and now I don’t want them together period). I’m actually trying really hard not to character assassinate Willow in the fic I’m currently working on, particularly because I recently read Teach Me to Hear the Mermaids Singing and felt like the author too easily turned Anya into a nasty character to get her out of the way of the romantic pairing the author wanted.

My parents finished watching Firefly on Monday. I came in for bits and pieces of “Heart of Gold” and sat the whole of “Objects in Space” and then we watched the special features, most of which I hadn’t myself seen before.

My dad asked if the deleted scenes were considered canon. *hearts my geek family*

Joss said that knowing you could be canceled at any moment is good -- not good for your digestion or good for your marriage, but it forces you to focus on the stories you most wanna tell. He called the show a “jewel” and I wondered, If not for that pressure, would we have had the intensely brilliant show we had? Would the quality have been as solid as it was?

Dude, Angie Hart [whose song “Blue” opened the BtVS ep “Conversations With Dead People”] played one of the religious whores in “Heart of Gold.” The blonde one who sings at the end.

And speaking of the end: ( spoilers for The Message and Heart of Gold )

I’ve mostly just been coming in and out while my parents watched my DVDs, but this time ‘round I noticed even more than I had when I marathoned with Rachel and Jonah that I actually like Jayne. For the longest time he was the one character that I really had no love for. Sure he provided comic relief, but he was brainless and brutish and yeah, ways to totally not win me at all. But I liked Jayne full-stop this time. I think because I read him as human, and seeing him as complex and vulnerable and all that makes me actually like him. Oh, and after having seen The Dive from Clausen’s Pier I am far more susceptible to the hotness of Sean Maher (to whom I had been previously indifferent).

Okay, that picture I was wondering about? Gotta be the same artist who did the Australian Serenity poster.

*loves*

mosca on the icon pairing meme:
      2. Ani Difranco/Anya
      Not only could it happen, but there are several albums that it might explain.

Beautiful icons with Leonard Cohen lyrics.

Ann Althouse quotes a NYT article on the winner of China’s version of American Idol ("Super Girl"):

[Li Yuchun], 21, is almost the antithesis of the assembly-line beauties regularly offered up on the government's China Central Television, or CCTV. Tall and gangly, with a thatch of frizzy hair, the adjectives most used to describe her in the media were "boyish" or "androgynous." Some commentators speculated that her fan base consisted of young girls who considered her to be their "boyfriend" because of her appearance.

The first commenter says, "a butch woman is seen as a romantic interest by enough young girls that that was the reason she won a popularity contest? Assuming the commentators weren't total idiots (though they probably are), it would suggest China won't have an overpopulation problem in a generation or so."

Ann replies: "Maybe androgyny is becoming popular because young men are trying to find a way to have sexual relationships. Li really is a woman but she looks boyish. That may help a young heterosexual man find a way to see other men as suitable sexual partners."

---

So, um doyle_sb4 linked to a SomethingAwful.net thread called "Things You've Learned About Your Fandom Thanks to Badfic" and I got sucked in. It’s almost entirely about anime, which meant I could skip over most of it, which was probably a blessing.

Snippets I particularly enjoyed:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
* There was no book. There was no original movie. There is only Johnny Depp.
(posted by Baelish)

ST Voyager:
B'Elanna would love to wear lacy dresses. Tom would, too.
Harry thinks about wearing lacy dresses, but is too scared to try one on.
Tuvok exists whenever he's in Ponn Farr and needs to bonk immediately or die, which happens about every few weeks dues to a recurring spatial anomaly.
(posted by Dama47)

Newsies:
2. Just because you're selling newspapers in 1899 New York doesn't mean you can't be an American high-schooler a hundred or more years later.
(posted by Cecilia86)

---

So, Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died on Saturday and Bush quickly nominated John Roberts as his replacement. This is the same Roberts who’s been up for Sandra Day O’Connor’s spot, so I’m confused by people who are all, “Who is this guy and where can I find info on him?” (From a Yahoo article: "For the past two months members of the United States Senate and the American people have learned about the career and character of Judge Roberts," Bush said. "They like what they see." Whether you agree with Bush’s assessment or not, the media has in fact been discussing Roberts for quite some time now.)

---

Ann Althouse on why New Orleans is under sea level to begin with

commodorified talks about how relief organizations work and how to make your donation most effective, and damned_colonial talks more about specifying where your donation goes.

versailles_rose has a list of some NOLA landmarks and how they fared, via the Associated Press. And a couple days later: "Katrina doesn't cancel Southern Decadence parade"

---

OkCupid told me:
     You are a Social Liberal (75% permissive)
      and an... Economic Liberal (36% permissive)
     You are best described as a: Democrat
      You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.
*cries*