I present my complete cadre of clickycritters. Click. Click, I say.

* Donald Trump knocked down the hideous monstrosity known as the Sun-Times Building, and replaced it with something just as hideous and five times as large. I have the sneaking suspicion the city actually paid him to do it, too.

* Is it just me, or does anyone else have to bite their tongue on cynical laughter when noting that the Chicago Police have 'we protect and serve' on their squad cars? Me, I always have the rather evil twitch to stencil in, when we're in the mood to, if you pay us extra to, and if you're not part of a minority we don't like. Despite now having multiple friends on police forces, I just can't bring myself to trust cops in general very much. I'd say 'particularly not large-city cops like the CPD', but frankly the itty-bitty-redneck-town cops scare me just as badly, though admittedly for somewhat different reasons.

* So. It seems Michael Jackson is dead. The only other musician in the past 100 years to be called a 'king'. Apparently being mourned in much the same fashion as the last King. Despite having quite liked a lot of his earlier stuff (about up to the Crotch Grabbing Video Incident) all I seem to really be able to think is, "I wonder how many small children are really, really relieved." Probably this is very uncharitable of me, but I kinda felt Elvis outlived his talent too.

* I own many styles of music, by many artists, in many languages, spanning several centuries. I didn't think I actually owned any music I'd be ashamed to admit I not only own, but like. This morning I was proved wrong. Apparently my guilty pleasure is, in fact, Huey Lewis & The News. You may jeer now; I spent all morning commute listening to "The Power of Love" on looped repeat, and smiling about it.

...No, really, I think Jon Stewart just summed up at least 85% of all conservatives with that one. Possibly worldwide, though I think the rest of the world has by and large come to grips with the difference between Personal Romantic Life and Professional Work and so doesn't give a damn.

Summer hath arrived; I can tell by the fact that I now require multiple bathings per day just to get through the day. (Ah, walking to work...) As a side note on this, I find that the use of the hybrid CTA busses (the 'clean air' busses) really do make a noticable impact on my commute. I still recall walking to work in this heat and being unable to breathe because of all the bus exhaust hanging in the overheated air. This is no longer any kind of a problem. So while I'm still overheating and sweating buckets, at least I'm not also frantically gasping for air.

Summer hath arrived. It may leave by the back door any time it wants now.

Johnny Dangerously is on Hulu.

And Evil Roy Slade is on youtube. (In chunks but - it's there! And worth a watch. Honestly.)

So, in between the cleaning and the errand running are the occasional bursts of catching my breath and seeing if the laundry's done yet, and desertmage (who is too young to have had this be a part of his childhood) gleefully dropped a bomb on a part of mine instead.



...If you are old enough to remember when the original Bonnie Tyler video was playing on MTV, I make no promises as to the state of your brain afterward.

(Though the line, 'the gayest man on earth would call this over the top' has led to some interesting discussion of Just How Gay the early/mid 80s bands actually were...)

I have to admit Chris hangs in my memory as one of my favorite characters EVER, so ...there will be bias.

( Chris, Chapter 1 )

Firstly, it's been ages since I played Suikoden at all, and 3 is where I flatlined. So, in starting over, I'm starting over from Suikoden 3 with optimal gamesave data from 1 and 2. And this is more or less an 'as I go' type of entry.

( hugo, chapter 1 )

Out of curiosity - and comments are screened - who on my friendslist is both on Skype and in possession of a Playstation 2?

(I haven't gotten a Wii or a PS3 yet. give me time.)

I'm thinking conference-call gaming might be ...fun.

...There is nothing quite like realizing your website is long, long overdue a complete overhaul, from bottom to top, and that it is so overdue this overhaul that you are far, far in over your head with regards to actually being able to do it.

bwuh.

There's shit on here that desperately needs to go, and a lot of stuff that needs to be added, and I have not got clue one how to go about all the changes necessary.

....is't possible I might pay someone for their time on this?

Dear Friendslist:

Courtesy of ziggadon:
http://www.scificool.com/spock-and-uhura-together-at-last/

Leonard Nimoy on Spock/Uhura:
Frankly, I was extremely jealous of his scenes with Zoe Saldana, and I think it’s totally unfair that I never got to do that. I will never forgive the writers and the director, for having put me in this position, to have to be watching that, rather than participating.

It is a peculiar thing to realize that while getting paid for writing is one of those 'sure, who'd say no to money, but I'm not focused on it' things, I would happily whore myself out for story art.

(I don't mean 'pr0n pic of my charactsrs' because in most cases that's kind of brain breaky for me. I mean 'I read your story and I drew this pic here based on that chapter you wrote there'. Which has happened quite rarely to me, all told, but hits my brain as a kind of ultimate compliment - it means not that my characters have gotten stuck in someone else's head, but the story itself got stuck in someone else's head long enough for them to draw it.)

I'm going to have to think about this, I think. How to improve my writing to get images stuck in people's heads, yessss.

You tell 'em, Mr. Gaiman sir.

There's a lot of truth to all that - but good holy goddamn, I have to admire the balls of a fan who writes to one author to bitch about another author and then use that to tell all authors what they oughta be doing in their own journalspace and in their own lives with their own time.

Here's a typewriter. You can be the monkey. Get back to me when you've discovered Hamlet, mmk?

I'm just now reaching a stage when I can start writing again. Poking at my characters and stories, picking things up...naturally I'm sure most of the stuff I've written lately sucks. (The last chapter of MitM is fanfic and written twice and I'm still wincing at it because oh my god it is in SUCH dire need of at LEAST another complete redo...) But - you write. And you keep writing, whatever will come, until the mind remembers the trick of it and you sink past the words to the places you can see...

And then of course there is bound to be a self-entitled fanboy peering over your shoulder and snarking 'Is it DONE YET?'

Cos the universe ain't yer bitch either, unfortunately.

AKA: If you really need to escape, do it in surroundsound.

Two notes, both nonspoilery.

* Saw a trailer for Ice Age. Yes, Kickback still wants one of the sabre toothed squirrels as a pet. He still thinks they're the coolest little buggers he's ever seen.

* Went to see X-Men: Origins, mostly because it was too late at night to see the Star Trek movie. Coolest line in the whole movie, however, was, I think there's a naked man in the barn. YMMV, but I think I found the movie a bit overpriced.

Also, Wolverine seems to be Marvel's pet angstbucket, and I kinda lost my taste for angstbuckets.

* Do not show me a very long blog wherein an entire purportedly-religious series of books is literarily shredded, and expect me to then do anything but snicker and snark at all religion. I'm sure it will wear off. As soon as I can put the blog down anyway. While I may in fact not be aiming anything at Your Religion, whatever it may be, it'll probably sound like it.
- unless you're a Dominionist, in which case I am Definitely Laughing AT You.

(psst. no, really, this is me laughing. I know it's hard to tell, but I'm laughing. Not at anyone. I'd say. *points* See?)

* Cheese dogs scream for mercy if you put them in the microwave. No, really, they do. They wail in high pitched voices. They wail so loudly I thought for a moment I was nuking a mouse. Thankfully, the microwave has a transparent front. Once I had verified there were no mice in the microwave, I laughed about that one too.

* TVTropes.org is a HORRIBLY addicting site to wade through. Much much more addicting than, for example, wikipedia (at which I have spent many a lost hour). Also very much with the giggling.

* No, the universe probably isn't THAT funny. But damn, it sure seems that way on four hours of sleep and three bottles of mountain dew, lemme tell ya.

To all of my friends who are discussing art and writing as a vocation rather than a career, I wish to note one thing:

All of us say we would write/draw whether we get paid to or not. All/most of us say we love what we do, but we'd be miserable if we were forced to treat it as a career.

*cough*

Darlins, would it kill us to put a 'paypal donate' button in our fic comms? No pressure, no huge ads, no constant links, just a note maybe to people as we add them to the comm or journal or whatever, along the lines of "If you like this, donate button is over there."

I mean...it's not a contract, just a vote of appreciation, you know? And maybe it'd bring in money and maybe it wouldn't, but to say 'whether we get paid or not' when we're definitely NOT paid is...well, I dunno. I certainly wouldn't mind the option of being paid every now and then. Even the monks get that much :)

*eyeballs y'all* And frankly, if I could drop some of you a fiver when I read a really good bit or a bit I've been really waiting to read...come on, it works for webcomics!

Some new dragcave dragons.

Okay, I haven't gotten a geode, or an alt-green, or an alt-black (damn I am trying though), but I did get a green: which I'm hoping will be breedable. And a Spring: that will mean I only have one more Seasonal to get.

Oh, and there's a bunch of new eggs, but I've only managed to catch two of what looks like four or five new types. These are the ones I've caught: and (and no I have no idea at all what they'll hatch into, but offering a heads up anyway.)

Hah. Redid the chapter almost completely. But I'm a lot happier with it now.

*eyeballs the mitm chapter*

...no, damnit, that is sub-par. Right events, voice is okay, but way too much tell and not enough show, not enough meat. mrf. Must rewrite.

Also: Dear FF7 canon writers.

I know you think of Reeve as that handy faceless character you can just slap anyoldwhere, but the CANON INCONSISTENCIES ARE REALLY DAMN ANNOYING TO WORK WITH, thank you.

*grumble* Makes me so tempted to send square the finished work, when it ever gets finished, and go 'HERE. use THIS. At least then it'll make SOME sort of sense.'

The Rules:
1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will - allegedly - create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

darthneko named five, so five there are:

( icons! )

* Dreaming of parking lot soccer played by a bunch of bored ambassadors in tuxes, your grandmother watching from a tailgate party because she's bored, while having an argument on the sidelines about whether it ought to be 'fussball' or 'foozball'? It's time to put down the Oblivion: Shivering Isles expansion. And the sugar.

* Protip: If you're going for that 'ratty artistic goatee' look, it's a good idea not to buy a fake-fur-lined hooded coat that is exactly the same color as your beard hair. Unless you like people assuming you shaved your coat and glued it to your chin.

* People who work at Borders, who work at Borders because they spend a lot of their income on books, CDs, and DVDs, who do not know that getting the store's credit card means paying a lot less of their personal income on all their shinies, make me wonder who's got their head shoved farther in the sand - me, or them. I don't even watch the news, generally.

* verniebear? You out there? POKE ME today.

Yesterday I, like many, saw the books disappearing on Amazon.com. I, like many, got really damn pissed about it and told a few other people about it.

And if it isn't fixed, I will damn sure be looking to relocate my book/music/whatever purchases the hell away from Amazon.com, cos that shit don't fly. But...

Take this into account.

I'm gonna give it a week or two before I get really annoyed. It's possible Amazon's a victim in this. Whether they move pronto to remedy the situation or not will, as far as I'm concerned, settle that issue.

ETA: Holycrap. you know a flame war's big when Neil Gaiman is weighing in on it. And...kinda...agreeing. Okay. Going to go put the caffeine down now, things have entered Weirdland.

Just for the record, tonight's Supernatural is currently fighting with the Buffy musical episode as the best episode of TV in my life ever.

The little discussion of slash, and the comment "Well, right now I'm crying on the inside" have made me need oxygen damnit. Oh man.

Dear 7-Eleven and the marketers for X-Men:

Putting a picture of a claws-out, pissy Wolverine on your 'X-treme Cappucino' machine does not, in fact, work. If you put Wolverine on a pot of black coffee, or a can of beer, that would work. But every time I see your 'X-Treme Cappucino' ad, all I can do is giggle.

Next time...try using one of the mutants that would actually drink cappucino. And admit to it.

There is no introduction to a new workweek quite like stepping off the train, and seeing a quite tall, slender woman who is otherwise garbed right out of the 1940s wearing a two foot high cherry red and banana yellow mohawk.

It really does just sort of set the tone for the week.

To all my friends who have been asking for writing prompts, I invite you to write a drabble in the world of your choice, using this article as a basis.

Because I really want to see that.

Okay. I gave in and got unicreatures. Commenting clickers who leave me links get clicks in return! I'd like to see everyone's collections.

This is my active collection.

For the record, my 'fully evolved' set may be viewed over here.

....Okay, so, someone had mentioned a ways back wanting to write something based on/set in my Griever Chronicles FF8 universe and I didn't remember what happened with that, so today I went googling 'Griever Chronicles' just to see what was out there, if anything.


Little did I guess I would find three year old, fantastic fanart that I'd never seen! Somebody go find this person and beg 'em to let me host a copy of this on my site, I don't actually have a Deviantart account. But it's really quite a pretty piece, no?

Leviathan's Freedom, it's called.

(No. I could be eighty and still find stuff like this squee-worthy. Someone liked it enough to draw. This is le shiny.)

So...I wandered around, in the recent past, to my fanfiction.net account. (I keep it in my links bar so I don't lose it, not because I use it.)

I haven't updated anything there in several years, so I was quite surprised to find that my work there still gets quite a few hits. There's even reviews there that were left this year. People apparently still read Griever, and its chronicles that I have tended to feel left the realm of 'fanfiction' and went quite off into AU territory, and were leaving me notes to please finish them. This despite the notice, in all caps, on my profile, that I wasn't updating anything over there anymore, and despite the fact that I haven't touched a lot of those stories in several years.

It was flattering - of course, it was flattering. Who wouldn't be gratified? I have to admit I have no idea who these visitors are or how they're finding my work. I mean...good grief. The pit of voles has grown so hugely much in the past several years. And it's sorted on the whole by the most recent updates. And Final Fantasy 8 is such a huge fandom. Yet they find me and sometimes even leave reviews.

Nothing ever dies on the internet, but things do fade. One of the people that encouraged me to write, at the beginning when I wasn't at all sure I could, hath faded away. And there's a part of me that would like to be Dramatic about this, and the usual "you defriended me!" drama one might expect...except that I haven't really had much to say in quite some time aside from 'damn I'm tired' or 'hey look, dragons', and a lot of my writing lately has not been work I'm pleased with or proud of...so it's really quite understandable. Friendships are like many other things, and need constant maintenance to survive. If I haven't had the time or the energy to do the maintenance, I don't really have the right to bitch that I'm lonely and bitter.

...I probably would anyway though, because...well, I'm a selfish bitch like that. But I admit I don't have the right to.

The stories that are there, all the unfinished works...they aren't dead and gone by any means. I just need to work out how to work up the gumption to finish them. Any of them. And then make the time, and do it.

Easier said than done, I think.

It feels weird to write.

It feels weirder to write things I've barely touched from the getgo anyway and that don't seem to make a lot of sense.

Mrf. tired.

If you're going to Anime Central, DO NOT forget to register and pay ONLINE, and GET THE BADGE MAILED TO YOU.

Srsly. Unless you LIKE camping out in a convention-hall-sized WAITING LINE just to get your badge. Get it mailed, yo.

This link and this post courtesy of people who told me to kick them hard to make sure they checked the 'mail me my badge' box on the order form this time.

Yesterday, I was walking home. As I usually do, in my haze of music, exhaustion, and general relief that I am now heading toward a vegetation-positive state rather than away from it.

There were many people in pink bobble hats, and I peered at them. Many people all wearing the same weird thing usually means some kind of marketing-related giveaway, which given we're right next to a lot of advertising companies at that part of the walk, is usually interesting.

A pink package (ah, like the hat) was pressed into my hands. A few inches thick, long as my hand. Unusually large for a giveaway. I stuffed it in my pocket to take a look at later, when I wasn't walking-while-dodging-traffic, and being tired promptly forgot about it.

This morning I took it out.

Male condoms (plural), female condoms (plural), packets of spermicidal lube, instructions on how to use it all, and the message, "Happy Valentine's Day".

I swear to God I love this town.

* Real men, as in people seen IRL, with physical eyeballs, and particularly men who are over six feet tall, three feet across, with shaved heads, should not be going hoppity skip down Wacker Drive in the rain. It completely fucks with my preconceptions of gender.

* I can has the Book of Galehaut. Shineh.

So. Today, for the first time in ages, I managed to sleep a full night and not wake up with screaming muscle pain. So, naturally, I decided to push it to the limit and get some serious housework done. Today, I have...

( Read more... )

*yawn*

I celebrate my birthday by....doing laundry, and writing a piece of story that doesn't seem to make much sense at all. Ah well. Could be worse.

Upside - I got to sleep in.
Downside - when I woke up, I found a vehicle emissions test certificate that seemed to suggest I had exactly 30 minutes left to get up, get dressed, and get my vehicle tested.

Upside - I got to the emissions test site in time to get my vehicle tested.
Downside - it DIED. Stone dead. On the testing floor. And then the hood ate one of the tester's hands.

Upside - This did not mean I failed. And the emissions guys said I'd misread the certificate, so I had months left to get the testing done. I just needed to retest sometime my car didn't die.
Downside - This did mean I had to take my car to a dealer, at once, to find out why it had died stone dead in the first place.

Upside - The dealer is literally across the street from my house and they know me so I can just drop the car off and walk home.
Downside - They can't fix it until monday, and I really needed the car TODAY to pay bills and get some emergency groceries, but this does me buggerall good if it doesn't start at all.

Upshot: I'm doing a lot of walking in damn cold weather today. And trying to make certain household necessities I'm almost out of last for several more days. And several bills are going to be late. And my birthday is tomorrow.

Head. Desk.

Today, my office MST3K'd the live internet broadcast of our dear Governor Blago's impeachment hearing.

We agreed that the only true course of action was to email our state senators and tell them to Please Throw Your PDA At The Governor Now.

The forecast for this evening calls for extended bouts of helpless sniggering, interspersed with brief periods of "OMG I can't believe they did that" bwuh-laughter and scattered showers of laughing-so-hard-you're-crying.

( I'll put it behind a cut anyway? )