Speaking of anemonerose...

Well, she's here. I don't thin my apartment has been this clean since I moved in. Also, she is lovely. Sadly, I am not.

I've been fighting off a cold for the past couple of days, or I thought it was just a cold, except by mid-afternoon yesterday it had brought along a blinding headache, nausea, and the shakes. I managed to sound pathetic enough to call off work (the part where I admitted I wasn't sure I could drive down there safely may have done it) and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, except for the parts where I puked, and going out to let anemonerose in when she got back from class. She has been super understanding of my awfulness, and even fed Lucy this morning for me. Best houseguest ever!

I feel better after, uh, I guess that adds up to about 18 hours of sleep? But still not up to any running around or having adventures. Hopefully if I rest up fully today, I'll be able to get to class/work tomorrow without incident. ::drinks orange juice just in case::

What's in your refrigerator right now?

Submitted By lovely4evr View 446 Answers

1. A box of baking soda, natch.

2. Veggies from the farmer's market: broccoli, peppers, the most aesthetically pleasing tomatoes I have seen in a long time.

3. Pound of ground beef, also from the farmer's market. (Free range!)

4. Several bottles of water (belonging to anemonerose)

5. Leftover pizza

6. Leftover pepperonis that didn't make it on the pizza

7. Leftover beef 'n' broccoli stir-fry

8. Bread--it gets stale too fast otherwise.

9. Pitcher of water.

10. Three tiny bottles of Muscato. (It's for a recipe, I swear.)

11. A piece of cheese

12. Quarter-pound of butter

13. Milk from a local dairy. (Oh, jesus, I am turning into a hippy.)

14. Balsamic vinegar and soy sauce.

15. Strawberry jam

16. Orange juice, only because I've been sick.

17. Cran-apple juice that slightly disappoints me.

18. Chocolate syrup (Nesquik, because it was cheaper than Hershey.)

Bonus: in my freezer - a carton of chocolate frozen yogurt

On top of the fridge - a box of fake Cheerios, a bag of rice, a bag of lentils and a pumpkin.

Hell's Own Syntax Paper, as I now think of it, has taken me all the way back to Ross (1967), a doctoral dissertation from back when generative syntax was shiny and new and dissertation copies were mimeographed if you were lucky.

1. In the acknowledgments, Ross thanks "these girls" who typed this thing for him over and over again. ::wince::

2. He keeps using "Chomsky-adjoin" as a verb. As in, "This constituent is Chomsky-adjoined to the left of the coordinate node." There are many things I can say about Chomsky these days, but at least he is no longer a verb.

MUUUUUUSIC!

Turned out I didn't ever get around to deleting everything from my other external (the Puddlejumper, long may she wave) and thus I have NOT lost all Xteen gigs of music in my collection. Just a couple things I've DL'd since December, plus "The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged."

Am busily burning hard copies of the good stuff right now, natch.

In celebration: the answers to that music meme from last week!

1) Sex Maggot, Goo Goo Dolls

2) Leader of Men - Nickleback

3) Sunflower - Everclear

4) Magic Medicine - Incubus

5) Schadenfreude - Avenue Q (id'd by thistlerose)

6) All I Need is the Girl - Frank Sinatra

7) Thank You For the Venom - My Chemical Romance

8) Drops of Jupiter - Train (id'd by zorb)

9) Coke Babies - Radiohead

10) In My Life - The Beatles (id'd by thistlerose)

11) Love - Smashing Pumpkins

12) Let Love In - Goo Goo Dolls

13) All the Young Dudes - Mott the Hoople (id'd by lofro)

14) What's Mine is Yours - Sleater-Kinney

15) Bad Fish - Sublime (id'd by zorb)

16) Ammunition - Switchfoot

17) At the Stars - Better than Ezra

18) Alien - Bush

19) Pretty (Ugly Before) - Elliot Smith

20) Little Liza Jane - Preservation Hall Jazz Band

21) Bulletproof...I Wish I Was - Radiohead

22) Changes - Three Doors Down

23) Long December - Counting Crows (id'd by thistlerose)

24) 3 Inch Horses, Two Faced Monsters - Modest Mouse

25) Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)

26) Down on Me - Janis Joplin

27) Grey Ice Water - Modest Mouse

28) This Ain't A Scene, It's A Goddamn Arms Race - Fall Out Boy (id'd by anemonerose)

29) Everbody Needs Somebody to Love - Blues Brothers

30) I'm Going Home - Rocky Horror Picture Show

1. I think one of my external hard drives might be dead. It's a Seagate, and it's got all my music on it (not backed up, either--aren't I clever?) and it spontaneously stopped working last night while I was listening to music. Now when I plug it in, I can hear something spinning away inside for several minutes before the computer even recognizes something plugged into the USB port, and while it shows up on my drivers list it doesn't appear as a drive under My Computer or Manage Disks. It's still under warranty, but first I'd have to get all the music off of it, and Seagate will charge a small fortune to recover it for me.

2. In other news, beef and broccoli stir fry is SOGOOD. And I have more broccoli! Need better beef, though--Schnucks, you are disappointing me.

3. If you're in a BBC-related fandom and you're not aware of 31thirtyone, WHY NOT? I spy at least four distinct fandoms on the list of participants and I don't even watch that much Beeb.

4. SYLLEPSIS: ADEQUATE PAPER TOPIC OR DEBILITATING NEUROLOGICAL DISEASE?

5. Speaking of which: today I ventured into the library For Science. UIUC actually has two libraries: the undergraduate library, which is underground (no lie!) and has a pretty standard open-stacks layout, and the Library, which is four stories and divided into separate collections and slightly intimidating. I ventured into the Modern Languages collection after some Czech linguistics, and managed to escape without incident. However, along my way I noticed something fascinating:

CARD CATALOGS.

There are hallways FULL of honest-to-goodness paper-based card catalogs. I don't know if they're current. I don't know if they're relevant. But they are THERE, and they made me smile.

(Dating myself here: I have never actually used a physical card catalog in my life. My earliest library memories involve learning to use the microfilm machine instead.)

1. GIVE ME YOUR SQUASH RECIPES. The farmer's market is full of peppers and squash and I want to take advantage.

2. I don't think I'll be signing up for sga_santa this year, or any other holiday fest. ::stares longingly at holmestice:: I'm just too busy.

3. I don't need to buy any yarn today. I don't. Stop that.

4. UPSTAIRS NEIGHBORS WHAT ARE YOU DOING. Bowling balls != Bocci balls, or at least that's what it SOUNDS like. :-(

So that Sanctuary fic I've been bitching and moaning forever? DONE. ceilidh and linnet_melody save the day once again!

Title: The Story Needed Mending

Author: mad_maudlin

Fandom: Sanctuary

Length: 18,372

Pairings and Characters: Kate Freelander/Ashley Magnus, Helen Magnus, Will Zimmerman, Henry Foss

Spoilers: Through season 2

Warnings: drug use, canon character death, disturbing imagery, rampant abuse of folklore

Summary: Once upon a time there was a girl, and a ghost. Then it got complicated.

@LiveJournal

@DreamWidtch

@AO3

Also! I finally let myself read my own gift from the exchange, AND IT'S AWESOME.

You Say Geek Like It's a Bad Thing by velvet_midnight. Or, Henry and Bigfoot Go to Comic-Con. AHAHAHAHAHA.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED WHILE WRITING THIS DAMN STORY:

1. I hate fairy tales and everybody in them.

2. There is actual mythological justification for the dance scene in "Kali, Part II." No, really.

3. There is also actual justification (or at least spackle) for Kate's name being so, uh, not at all Asian? (Though I've decided that it is my personal canon that "Kate" is a shortened form of a longer Hindi name that she finds embarrassingly girly.) Because there are actual people in Indian now with names like Engineer, Pilot and Stalin.

4: Boiled potatoes with curry powder: you can take the linguist out of the Former Soviet Union...

ARGH.

So the university is giving out candy departmental block grants, which is going to determine things like how many departmental fellowships we can give out for something like the next FIVE YEARS. In order to justify our existence, we were all instructed via e-mail to submit CVs to the head of the department, but that was quickly followed up with a note that first-year grad students needn't bother since our primary accomplishment thus far is our ability to find parking spaces on Matthews Street. Goody! I don't know how to write an academic CV anyway!

I just got a follow-up message from my advisor basically saying, "Uh, my bad. We actually do need those from you. Tomorrow."

::FACEPALM::

Link to any good CV-writing resources?

ALMOST DONE! ALMOST DONE!

Fairy tales this fic has referenced so far, in some form:

Tam Lin

Cupid and Psyche

The Youth Who Wanted to Shiver

Bearskin

The Brave Little Tailor

The Little Mermaid

Sleeping Beauty

I would love to work in Hans the Hedgehog, except I think that would be going too far into the land of crack to ever return.

What famous person from history would you have liked to have as a parent, and why?Submitted By scribble_hotep View 771 Answers

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Okay, no, that's a lie. I want fictional!Ben from the Age of Unreason quartet, because he is AWESOME. But I also ship Ben/Lenka in that verse too hard to want to split them up, so I would settle for being one of their inevitable awesome Mary Sue kids. (Of course, I also ship Ben/Voltaire in that universe, so maybe Lenka would be understanding...she is the most awesome fictional Czech this side of Radek Zelenka, after all.)

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.

Step 2: Post the first line (or two) from the first 30 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.

Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.

Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.

If there's an asterisk, it means that the song title was in the first line and I gave you a different part of the song instead. Also, I'm reserving the right to skip songs that are not in English, by lofro's band, or otherwise unlikely to be guessed by most of my flist.

1) Well, I was hanging around at the railway station

2) Tell your friends not to think out loud until they swallow

3) I know where you go when you want to fall.

4) On this page, you see a little girl giggling at a hippopotamus.

5) Right now you are down and out, and feeling pretty crappy.

6) Got my tweed pressed, got my best vest

7) Sister, I'm not much a poet, but a criminal

8) the best soy latte that you ever had, and me *

9) Easy living, easy hold

10) There are places I remember

11) To my mistakes, to my mistakes of cowardice

12) You wait, wanting this world to let you in

13) Well Billy rapped all night about his suicide

14) Sit down, honey, let's kill some time

15) When you grab ahold of me, you tell me that I'll never be set free

16) Blame it on what you've been through, blame it on what you're into

17) Maybe I should drop you at your door, leave tonight and vanish up the shore

18) The satellite comes and goes, we give each other all we know

19) Sunshine been keeping me up for days

20) Oh, the raccoon went up that 'simmon tree, I said knock those 'simmons down to me *

21) Limb by limb and tooth by tooth

22) I'm not supposed to be scared of anything

23) and the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls *

24) Tongue tip tied to the roof of my mouth

25) I love you and you love me and that's the way it's got to be *

26) Believe in your brother, have faith in man *

27) on the arctic glass *

28) I am an arms dealer

29) sweetheart to miss, sugar to kiss *

30) On the day I went away, goodbye was all I had to say

WANTED: An icon of Robin Dunne/Will Zimmerman, in a sparkly pink tiara, with the text OKAY I'M HERE YOU CAN START NOW.

Just don't ask WHY.

At least I get an extension on the fic. ::pokes it::

Dear Sanctuary Ficathon story:

OH MY GOD SHUT UP STOP HAVING DRAMA. WILL YOU ARE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE IN THIS. THAT ALSO GOES FOR MAGNUS AND THE HEISENBURG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.

THIS WAS ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE 5K WORDS.

ALKSDJFLJGLKFKJDSLK.

No love,

Me. :-(

Why does the Internet not have a reverse cookbook? You know, where you put in all the random things in your fridge and it spits out potential recipes?

I'm not much of a vid person (I actually have a rather irrational dislike of them sometimes, mostly because of a string of elderly computers) but I did want to rec this Sherlock vid using Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." Some songs were just made for a certain fandom, you know?

You know, I've realized yet another reason why it's better I didn't go to Bangor University. Because, as I think about it, the vast majority of my knowledge of UK-related-things comes from my media preferences. Specifically things like Harry Potter, Hitchhiker's Guide, the Whoniverse, etc etc.

I probably would've been disappointed that real!Britain is not knee-deep in aliens, monsters and inexplicable crimes every day of the week, is what I'm saying. Eventually, I would've gone looking for them.

...actually, that would make a very interesting plot for a NaNoNovel.

I've decided that I should write my Syntax paper on e. e. cummings. Specifically, "since feeling is First." THAT WILL SHOW THEM HA.

For reals request, though! In addition to writing absurd amounts of Sherlock fic, I've been working on my fic for the Sanctuary fic exchange and am going to need a beta hopefully by the weekend. It's a kind of AU, and the pairing is Kate/Ashely--yes, ceilidh, your two least favorite characters at once! ;-) I know I don't have a ton of Sanctuary fans on my flist, but if anyone's interested if giving this a gander, I'd appreciate it.

I just had to replace a tire. Don't talk to me. ::fumes::

Except DO talk to me, because it'll be an excuse not to do my syntax homework. Or actually, my excuse is going to be the awsome lecture by this guy I went to on Thursday that basically undermines the existence of syntax.

Or at least he POKED it a little bit, is what I'm saying.

Background exposition: one of the things that makes Language as humans do it different from animal communication is, well, the syntax of things--the fact that Language has structures that aren't based entirely on what sits next to what. Birds, bees and sign-using monkeys still pretty much base their communication on linear structure, and the more important relations are sequential. Language is sequential, too, and there's plenty of language stuff that has to do with adjacency--liason in French, for instance, or the alternation between English "a" and "an." But there's no way you can explain the following sentences based on adjacency alone:

The man hanged himself.

The man who saw Katie hanged himself.

The man who saw Katie kiss the wombats hanged himself.

The man who saw Katie kiss the wombats in the deli hanged himself.

ETC ETC you can keep adding words, but the final pronoun will always agree with "The man," and it can never be "herself" or "itself" or "themselves," and you can't explain WHY without imposing an abstract structure that gives you the concept of the relative clause.

BUT BUT BUT you can also build deliberately weird or broken sentences like:

The horse raced past the barn fell down.

While Anna dressed the baby in the striped onsie spit up on the bed.

The package from the elderly tourists was late.

And these are weird either because our brains choke on the syntax that's there ("The horse...fell down," that's not different from "The man...hanged himself," right?) or they invent illusions of syntax that ISN'T there (just give that last one to a spellchecker, betcha it'll flag the verb and try to make it "were).

And the whole lecture was basically about, okay, so maybe we don't actually use Real Proper Syntax to parse things; we use fake, sausage-machine syntax that gets us a "good enough" representation for comprehension, by breaking things up into chunks and applying adjacency-based rules to them. And it's good enough for most of the time, just that sometimes sentences like the ones above play tricks on us because we've grouped or divided things wrong--the words are in the wrong sausages--but it's still okay because those are so rare.

HE DID RESEARCH ON THIS GUYS. THERE WERE HAMS.

Anyway, he ended his presentation with some wild speculation that maybe, our brains still have an adjacency-based parser left over from our prelinguistic monkey heritage, and the Real Proper Syntax Parser only comes online when the Heuristic Adjacency Monkey Parser fails or gets overwhelmed. He did not claim that this explains or justifies Sarah Palin in any way, but I think that was implicit.

The POINT is that if we are really mostly using the HAMP and not the RPSP to do language, WHY DO I HAVE TO DRAW TREE DIAGRAM WITH A FONT I CAN'T DOWNLOAD?

WHY, DEVIL PROFESSOR?

This post brought to you by Language; LING 501 Syntax I; that fucking storm drain out from of Steak 'n' Shake that bit my tire; and St. James Winery's Country Red. Only half a glass, though; friends don't let friends diagram drunk.

Stolen from cabell's FB: Geek Women and Self-Labeling in Online Communities, or specifically, why do so many of us call ourselves (fan)girls?

Warning: contains blanket statements about privilege and hegemony that will probably upset lofro.

In re icarusancalion's SGA/Pern mashup fic:

Icarus: Apparently wherries are carnivorous.

me: ...

WELL YOU CAN JUST ROCK ME TO SLEEP TONIGHT.

Icarus: LOLOLOL!

me: FLESH EATING LLAMABIRDS ARE COMING TO GET ME.

Possibly I should not have bought the $5 Aldi wine.

2006 survey said 30% of Americans counted their pets as family members, but not same-sex couples.

INFINITE FACEPALM, COUNTRY.

Oh, fandom.

Rich (of The Ten Doctors) is drawing another Dr. Who comic, called Outrage.

It is a crossover with Jem and the Holograms.

It has musical numbers.

Never change, fandom. Never change.

Oh my god, you guys, the things you learn in fandom.

J. M. Barrie wrote self-insert crackfic for Arthur Conan Doyle.

"'And, Watson, if you go up to the ceiling again I shall make you stay there.'"

BRB dying of laughter. :-D :-D :-D

I don't have a life or an academic career at the moment. I have Sherlock fandom. God damn it.

Two recs: An Act of Charity and The Paradox Suite by wordstrings, in which Sherlock is such a fucking sociopath and John? Is pretty okay with that. There are some kind of disturbing things in these stories, including a scene involving breathplay, but you should read it anyway because this is how these characters are supposed to be.

Did not do all the things. Realized it might be smart to check Goodwill before I buy shelving new. But I realized I wanted to share a poem from my Russian class today--it's Pushkin so it makes me feel cultured.

Всё моё, сказало злато

Всё моё, сказал булат

Всё куплю, сказало злато

Всё возьму, сказал булат

Loose translation:

"All is mine," declared the Gold

"All is mine," declared the Steel

"I can buy it," Gold protested

"I can take it," answered Steel.

DO ALL THE THINGS

--Meijer: milk and peanut butter

--Target: BOOKSHEEEELF.

--License plates: my car needs to wear them soon.

--<lj user="icarusancalion>'s Big Bang story: I am the Pacing Beta. ::paces:: This means, of course, I have to displace the kitten on my arm. ::looks at kitten; looks at arm::

I am in that stage of being where I have so much to DO that I am utterly incapable of doing any of it. The lists coagulate into a solid mass of OMG and I just end up wanting to curl up on the couch and write fanfic.

I HAVE RUSSIAN HOMEWORK GODDAMN IT. AND LAUNDRY. ::HAIRTEAR::

I have officially given up on Not Being In Sherlock Fandom (yes, lofro, point and laugh) so, thought for the day: how is it that Benedict Cumberbatch can look ridiculously pretty from some angles, and from other angles he looks like the creature from Splice?

So you know that thing, that I said I wasn't going to do, and then I did it?

Yeah. I did it again. With bonus geography fail, I think!

::sighs::

You guys...I think I have another fandom.

Two interesting posts via sherlockbbc (yes, yes, I give up. ::fans::) that I think apply to more than one of my fandoms:

Intellectually Bullying, or, why is a verbal assault different from a physical one?

The Myth of Genius, and how it's tied up with privilege, and how destructive it is when we fail to recognize that.

The OPs mention Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House, Tony Stark, and Patrick Jane as examples of what they're talking about; from my other fandoms I'd throw in Severus Snape, Reboot!Spock, some incarnations of the Doctor, possibly Hermione Granger and most emphatically Rodney McKay. There are some good points raised in the OPs and the comm post, for and against the argument, but frankly I'm just glad to find some validation in the fact my love of Rodney is not and can't be entirely unproblematic.

So of course, the first rainy day of the term is the day I have EPIC BUS FAIL. But at least I've proven that I can walk to the Green Line, even if I don't have to like it. -.-

ALSO I WANT MY BOOKS UPS GODDAMIT. They insist I have to sign for the last textbook I need and since they can't get in my security door, I have no way of knowing when they're around. Missed the second attempt today. This will potentially require an excursion to northern Urbana, where, I have heard tell, there are wolves. (I also need to get my MO license plates from the post office, but at least they left me a little note and a pick-up option.)

Tomorrow = SUCK. Look at this shit.

8am-9.30 Phonetics (and I have to catch the bus at 7:30 to make this class /o)

9.30-11 Socio (for which I STILL NEED MAH BOOKS)

12.30pm-2 Tools and Tech, the class I had to skip yesterday due to having barf

2-5 TIME FOR WACKY HIJINKS?

5-11pm My first shift back at SnS. I know, I know, I need the money, but...DO NOT WANT. (Especially because I have to miss the awesome lecture from 4-5 that I was actually looking forward to...I told them I wasn't available until 6 on Thursdays but I guess they didn't read too close. Will fix this.)

Oh, but random good news: my mom's therapist got her a grant that will allow her a couple months of free appointments. Woot woot!

Finally: No crossposty, please. My LJ isn't as separate from my FB as some people, but I still don't need elderly relative reading my fanfic. Especially since I am theoretically at work on the second part of that Sherlock fic that wasn't even supposed to be written.

I am a sick Maudlin. Or was, but I appear to be getting better. ::pokes tummy:: Not on, bitch.

Randomly, I stumbled upon this picspam page and have determined that no, the name "Benedict Cumberbatch" is just as silly transliterated into Russian. Then again, most non-Russian names are.

READINGS. I HAVE THEM.

I watched the new Who with lofro, who is not a Who fan but actually liked this one, which is good, because it was awesome.

The plot was nice and clean, and yes, it did reprise some elements of "Prisoner of the Judoon" (though that was Phil Ford's writing) but I really didn't mind. It also hit on what seems to be some of Mofty's favorite themes: perceptual anomalies, creepy children, and things with nasty pointy teeth. (Somebody pointed out that it's almost like "Blink" meets "The Girl in the Fireplace" at times.) But we got some great lines, a few very vivid side characters, and probably my biggest complaint is the way this show insists that the sun can flicker, giant eyeballs can cruise over Western countries and global computer systems can suffer massive errors, but still, nobody believes in aliens.

The whole point of the episode is to show off the shiny new Doctor man, and it did its job nicely. Eleven seems more mature than Ten was, more comfortable with himself, though still with the raging ego, and there's a general thread of badassitude running close to the surface that reminds me more of Nine, and to all this I say: yes. He's a bit of a bastard, but magnificently so, and I think it really sets the tone for him that he called the bad guys back in order to scold them--and that he opens the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers. (Yes, I've seen Those Spoilers. But not the Other Ones. Shush.) I now understand why Mofty found MS so impressive, because he does project an older persona very well, and with the bowtie costume and all it actually works quite well. I was anticipating more of an absent-minded-professor out of him based on the costume, but no, this guy regenerated from a puddle of rage and emo; this guys has got edges.

I also really liked Amy; she's nicely distinct from all the other NuWho Companions, but clearly complements the Doctor in some of the same ways that Donna did. I am a little uneasy about the wedding thing, because, well, DAMN. THIS IS BECOMING A RUNNING THEME. But I'm also willing to reserve judgment. I presume Mofty does NOT share Rusty's obsession with the romance template of "inaccessible, reserved dom/shamelessly devoted sub" and am thus hoping against hope that we won't see a rehash of the Doctor/Rose/Mickey triangle in Doctor/Amy/Rory; I have this thing about the nice guys sometimes finishing ahead of the flash bastards, however awesome their spaceships.

I am also super excited about Neil Gaiman's Series 6 episode and hope he will say a few words about it when lofro and I see him in Chicago in two weeks.

One question, because I am that much of a pedant: what's the year again? I pretty much had "End of Time" pegged at New Year's 2010/2011, but "Eleventh Hour" has three separate time stamps at zero, twelve, and fourteen years, with no internal points of reference* except perhaps the fact that at year twelve since Eleven met Amy, everybody's got very modern camera phones and laptops, putting it easily in 2010 or 2011 still. (In fact, one could make the argument that the TARDIS was actively trying to return to its last temporal location when the engines overheated, but that would be pure spackle.) So are we now three years in the future, timeline-wise? Or two? Or one or none? I MUST KNOW THESE THINGS RAR.

(There is the fact that, as somebody on another comm pointed out, Rory's hospital ID was issued in 1990. But that clashes so drastically with his and Amy's apparent ages and the mobiles on display that I refuse to consider it anything but a hiccup from the props department. Or possibly a crack in time. Yeah, that's it.)

Nonspoilery bit of squee: Matt Smith wrote fanfic to get himself into character. YES.

I just posted another Sanctuary fic for my story_lottery board: Occupational Hazards featuring Kate, Henry and a cliff. @ LJ - DW - AO3.

Just for reference:

story_lottery

1/7 01. 1 - (joker) 02. 2 - a cave 03. 3 - a park bench 04. 5 - a tree house 05. 8 - a cliff 06. 13 - a hut 07. BONUS PROMPT! 21 - a stadium

I know at least one more of these will be a Sanctuary fic, but I'm not sure if I can do all of them.

Am watching reruns of Supernatural on cable, since they stopped airing the ER reruns my mom likes. The episode is called "Sex & Violence."

...

I think I get it now.

Best day off ever, guys. Even if I am a little sunburnt.

♥

This is how my weekend goes:

Friday 11am - 3pm

Friday 5pm - Saturday 1am

Saturday 10:30am-3pm

Saturday 7:15pm-Sunday 2am

Sunday 11am-7pm

Sleep? Who needs sleep?

You guys...

I actually had a good day at work.

::worries::

A tragic article with an unfortunate headline:

Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath

Not that anyone would actually assume the women and girls were the rapists...well, any smart one...

Spending my entire weekend at the restaurant: lame.

Fighting with health insurance because of a coding glitch: lamer.

Tiny moment of linguistic glee when this article refers to "computer mouses": not lame, but kind of sad.

Next round of sg_fic_uoa is up! I obvious can't tell you which fic I wrote, but the voting post is here.

Pimping again: baseballfantasy! We've got four teams now! Tell your friends!

As crash blossoms go, this is epic:

Joseph Berger died, retired business executive.

Somebody got paid for that headline, you guys. ::wince::

So that six-word life sentence thing on LJ's front page recently? Mine has been, "I will never leave this restaurant." I worked ten days straight, anywhere from four to nine hours a day (not counting random two-hour breaks mixed in) and the strain was starting to show. We will not speak of Thursday night ever again.

Today, however, was a lovely day off in more ways than one; the weather was beautiful, and I did two really fun things. First off, I got up early despite working till 1:30 to go to Crossroads Prep in the city and talk to some Model UN students about Peace Corps, scoring free bananas and bagels in the process. Then I took a nap, organized some insurance paperwork, and went to DeSmet high school to see a play by mildred_pierce read by a local theatre company. They're doing reader's theater all weekend with about five different plays that have been submitted, in order to pick one for a full production. mildred_pierce's play was AWESOME--a funny and charming one-act love story--and I would love to see it staged properly, Journey posters and all.

The other one-act they did was a David Mamet-ish piece about a professor who studies death trapped in an elevator with a suicidal nurse, and if you have been reading this journal long enough you know what I think of David Mamet. I am not biased at all when I say that my sister's was WAY better, but the guy who wrote the death play was clearly part of a clique that included the rest of the company, because they spent a lot of time congratulating him on how awesome it was during the time set aside for critique. When I piped up to argue that actually, the death play had really bad characterization and horrible pacing, the moderator got very defensive, and totally skipped over a topic on the critique form by saying "I think we can all agree..." at least once. I wouldn't have been so harsh except they were MUCH more thorough at picking over mildred_pierce's play, and there was nice dialogue going which the moderator encouraged without getting involved. If I'd known the second "discussion" was just going to be a mutual congratulation society, I wouldn't have tried to interrupt. :-/

Now I'm doing what I thought were final fixes on Betty the Baseball Machine for baseballfantasy, except I realized as I hunted for the source of a strange scoring glitch that I left out a major category of play: the fielder's choice. As it is, ALL plate appearances that end in a defensive out are scored as strike-outs, fly outs, or ground outs; I wrote the code to allow sacrifices but there's currently no way to put out the lead runner instead of the batter. That's kind of a big deal. :-(

(An aside: debugging the scoring glitch took for freakin' EVER, because ever since I set up the table of probabilities the majority of half-innings are scoreless, and the glitch only cropped up when an RBI was followed by another hit or an error. Oh my GOD that took forever to figure out.)

Tl;dr version: hi. I like having days off.

Remember, baseballfantasy. Tell your friends!

I just have to code in the ability to advance a runner on an out (sac flies and sac bunts) and then I'll be done with the working guts of Betty the Baseball Simulator. Everything else beyond that will be about creating human-readable (and LJ-postable) outputs. Estimated length now topping at least 1,000 lines, but I know the bits I have do what they're meant to; it's making them mate that's going to be a bitch.

Aside: it is really frustrating that "out" is a reserved word in Ada95. :-/

For that "when you see this" poetry meme, and also for lofro, and for Lou, and for all the martyrs.

the lesson of the moth

by Don Marquis

from "Archy and Mehitabel," 1927

i was talking to a moth

the other evening

he was trying to break into

an electric light bulb

and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows

pull this stunt i asked him

because it is the conventional

thing for moths or why

if that had been an uncovered

candle instead of an electric

light bulb you would

now be a small unsightly cinder

have you no sense

plenty of it he answered

but at times we get tired

of using it

we get bored with the routine

and crave beauty

and excitement

fire is beautiful

and we know that if we get

too close it will kill us

but what does that matter

it is better to be happy

for a moment

and be burned up with beauty

than to live a long time

and be bored all the while

so we wad all our life up

into one little roll

and then we shoot the roll

that is what life is for

it is better to be a part of beauty

for one instant and then cease to

exist than to exist forever

and never be a part of beauty

our attitude toward life

is come easy go easy

we are like human beings

used to be before they became

too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him

out of his philosophy

he went and immolated himself

on a patent cigar lighter

i do not agree with him

myself i would rather have

half the happiness and twice

the longevity

but at the same time i wish

there was something i wanted

as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

Okay, guys, it's a ridiculous hour of night but I feel like it's now or never.

baseballfantasy.

A while ago, I wondered out loud, "Wouldn't it be fun to have fantasy baseball that's truly fantastic? Like instead of using real players, we used hobbits and shit?" But at the time I ran up against a very basic problem: no way to usefully simulate games without tying the characters to a real player, and of course, no way to meaningfully tie characters to players.

Well, I am moving into the beta stage of a working baseball simulator using random numbers, so I don't HAVE to invoke real players. And I think it's high time we had a fantasy baseball league with a real element of fantasy--like, one that lets us pit the Beaumont Browncoats against the Winterfell Wolves.

Because the only thing better than nerdy is other kinds of nerdy.

I've posted a FAQ, and opened up nominations of fandom teams. I'm also called for volunteers, ideas, and fun things.

Please pimp this idea like a crazy pimping thing. The more, the merrier!

(Also this gives me a deadline for finishing the simulator.)

"The Biggest Loser" really needs to incorporate some kind challenge that involves mopping a medium-sized chain restaurant. And I won't even talk about the invasion of the high school kids. (Though it seems oddly appropriate that most of them were coming from a production of "Little Shop of Horrors.")

Instead, thistlerose tagged me:

Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday (month and day). Then you write down 3 events, 3 births, 3 deaths, 3 holidays, and tag 3 friends.

Avoiding the obvious ones here...

Events:

1787 – Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1900 – Max Planck, in his house at Grunewald, on the outskirts of Berlin, discovers the law of black body emission.

1988 – Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.

Births:

1873 – Willa Cather, American novelist (d. 1947)

1905 – Gerard Kuiper, Dutch-born American astronomer (d. 1973)

1916 – Yekaterina Budanova, Soviet pilot, one of only two female flying aces (d. 1943)

Deaths:

1817 – William Bligh, British naval officer (b. 1745)

1970 – Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist (b. 1883)

2006 – Jeane Kirkpatrick, American diplomat (b. 1926)

Holidays:

National Cotton Candy Day

Saint Ambrose's Day (Anglican)

International Civil Aviation Day

I tag lofro, marginaliana and an_kayoh.

So yesterday was supposed to be my day off, but in the interest of racking up more hours I volunteered to worked 8pm-1am. I thought I would be finishing my service training (just two months after starting, whoo!) but because of staffing fiascos and the eight million parties of 4-12 who showed up, I did not get a chance to sit down the entire shift, and I also didn't get to clock out until quarter to two. /o

I discovered, among other things, that the muzak soundtrack changes in the evening, going from "easy listening hits of the seventies, eighties and nineties" to "random pop tracks what the kids must like." Including Weezer's "Island in the Sun" and FOB's "This Ain't A Scene, It's an Arms Race." (There may have been some stompy dancing going on to that one while bussing tables.) Also, after about 9pm there's no one working the fountain, so I had to make my own shakes on a semi-functional blender...including six for on table. (Who tipped me $4 for a $50 order.) But that was at least better than the table where two morons left early and left $10 to cover their share of the check, or possibly as a tip...except the unpaid portion of the tip was over $12. ::facepalm::

At least a random guy tipped me $6 for a burger and a shake, right?

And today I'm on the schedule to work 12-3 and 5-8, and after work I'm supposed to meet my friend K for dinner at BreadCo. Except as I was leaving last night, Manager R asked me, "Hey, you wanna work tomorrow night too?" So now I've added a third three-hour shift, 10-1. I mean, yeah, it's hours and I need them, but I also need to not DIE.

Sunday I work 11:30-3 and Monday I'm off, though. I'll survive.

Okay, folks. accoladex is looking for Firefly fic recs.

HIT ME. (Or her. But if you hit her, hit very gently. I'm more durable.)