I've been in Assignment Hell (tm) this afternoon, and this should keep you all amused and entertained while I go to to class and hand in said assignment.



Via just about everyone:

Put your music-playing device on random and list a lyric or two from the first 25 songs to play. Implore your f-list to guess the songs (without googling!), because making the internet dance for your amusement is a time-honoured way to waste a few hours. Whoever guesses the most songs correctly gets Fabulous Internet Prizes (tm)!


1.Can a vision fall short of dreams? There's a downy angel crouching at my feet

2. I think you like to be the victim; I think you like to be in pain. I think you make yourself a victim almost every single day (Everclear -- Everything to Everyone, [livejournal.com profile] tanaise)

3. If only I could see what you see. If only I could just believe a thing.

4. I could possibly be fading; or have something more to gain. I could feel myself growing colder.

5. Mylene Farmer -- Desenchantee (I'm not going to make you do French.)

5. I'd rather drown than swim. I can't walk on water (Sneaker Pimps -- Velvet Divorce, [livejournal.com profile] hominysnark)

6. You say that all the good is gone, that I have forgotten who I am.

7. I am the shoreline but you're the sea. (Pearl Jam -- You Are, [livejournal.com profile] subject_zero)

8. Don't talk of worlds that never were; the end is all that's ever true. (The Cure -- Burn, [livejournal.com profile] stillsostrange)

9. Well it isn't a problem, nothing we can't keep between the sheets.

10. Moby -- Honey, which may as well be an instrumental.

10. Selfish about my privacy as long as I can be with me: we get along so well I can't believe.

11. Well the night eats up my body heat and there's no sign of another and I find myself slipping down into that black. (Vienna Teng -- Homecoming, [livejournal.com profile] sovay)

12. I've walked Las Ramblas, but not with real intent.

13. There was a Rapture so I can never see you anymore.

14. There’s nothing I’d like better than to fall but I fear I have nothing to give. (Sarah McLachlan -- Fear, [livejournal.com profile] stillsostrange)

15. Space is colder than the air in the mountains where I come from. (Matthew Good -- Flight Recorder from Viking 7, [livejournal.com profile] mekkavandexter)

16. I know you tried to forget me, but today is Remembrance Day. (The Odds -- Eat My Brain, [livejournal.com profile] timprov)

17. Well, I put you inside of me but none of that matters anymore. (NIN -- Vessel, [livejournal.com profile] subject_zero)

18. Near where I live there's a viaduct where people jump when they're out of luck raining down on the cars and trucks below. They've put a net there to catch their fall like it'll stop anyone at all what they don't know is when nature calls, you go. (Barenaked Ladies -- War on Drugs, [livejournal.com profile] tanaise)

19. Now after all, don't feel like nothing: like walking away, like a mouth full of rain at twelve o clock.

20. She can't tell me that all of the love songs have been written: she's never been in love with you before.

21. Your crust is just incredible; the radio was edible when you said don't wipe your asses with your sleeves. (The Tragically Hip -- Emperor Penguin, [livejournal.com profile] cszego)

22. Portraits hung in empty halls, frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget. (Don McLean -- Vincent, [livejournal.com profile] ogre_san)

23. In a flood of your tears, in sackcloth and ashes and ashes and secondhand passion and stolen guitars. (The Sisters of Mercy -- Flood I, [livejournal.com profile] susansugarspun)

24. I'm a stranger in this town. (Bush -- Letting the Cables Sleep, [livejournal.com profile] iamrazorwing)

25. Love is a verb; love is a doing word. (Massive Attack -- Teardrop, [livejournal.com profile] bobafet)


...y'know, I knew a lot of my taste in music calcified around the mid-nineties, but that really brings it home.
I'm going to be off the radar for...well, as long as it takes me to do this paper. Which might be five days (although I promise do to contest results before then).

In the meantime...

50 Question Meme of Doom )
July 15, 2007 Progress Notes:

"Miles to Isengard"

Words today: 1000.
Words total: 5600.
Reason for stopping: It was like squeezing blood from one's own lower intestine already.
Liquid Refreshment: Water with lemon.
Munchies: Sushi. I was virtuous and deserved such today.
Exercise: Bathroom cleaning.
Mail: Nomail.

Darling du Jour: He disappears into the flashlight-shadow until I can't see nothing but the tips of his long brown toes. Kids didn't grow up with toes like that in my generation. Ours were all bent from wearing shoes young. Our mamas didn't let us run barefoot.

Tyop du Jour: as the wind tilts the trailer gently back and forth on its tired.
Words MS Word Doesn't Know: Nada.

Mean Things: Taking ethical advice that's really just you projecting on someone who can't speak up to contradict. Fatigue-induced discharge of firearms.
Research Roundup: U.S. National Parks, more travel directions.
Books in progress: John Milton, Paradise Lost; Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, A Companion to Wolves; Ken MacLeod, The Execution Channel

The glamour: My bathroom, I has cleaned it!


This is for sure going to be at least a novelette. I don't think it'll track into novella territory, but it's going to be the longest thing that's not a book I've ever written, and I fear for the selling of it if I actually finish it. Why the finishing? I seem to be down to a "thousand words every two weeks" sort of schedule.

(Yes, I am doing school right now. I am turning out more than that weekly in papers and stuffing my head with evolutionary biology and Milton in accelerated courses that I need -- and largely am getting -- good grades in. That does not get this guilt gorilla off my back.)

((And no, that's not a request for pats on the head and/or validation and external permission to be writing less lately. I know I have permission. I gave me permission. I'm busy. I'm just saying I feel bad about it, and I suspect that's not going to change until I have the room in my head to get back to 500-750 words a day.))

(((Any more brackets and this'll get silly.)))

Let's cut to meme!


meeemememememememe! )


I feel...digital.

And also like a big gothnerd for squeaking over that stripy skirt. :D
April 26, 2007 Progress Notes:

Above

Words today: 1850.
Words total: 8500.
Reason for stopping: So. Very. Hungry.
Liquid Refreshment: Water.
Munchies: Dried apple rings.
Exercise: N/A.
Mail: Nomail.

Darling du Jour: I read that word in a thick old book once, and when I went to Jack to ask what it meant, he held his hands out and they glowed so gently I thought they might kiss the air, and since that day I wanted a house that was iridescent, that lit without burning. Being in love is sort of like that, when it's real. When it's true.

Tyop du Jour: N/A
Words MS Word Doesn't Know: N/A

Mean Things: Fire. War. And being wrong, worse than either.
Research Roundup: N/A. I'm doing surprisingly little research for this.
Books in progress: Nicola Griffith, The Blue Place

The glamour: Cleaned the kitchen, put away some laundry, answered some e-mail and have some more to be answered before I go to bed tonight.



Just in, my Final Really Permanent For Sure Wiscon Schedule:

Three Comrades Go On A Quest.... (Politics, Race, Class, and Religion)
Saturday, 1:00-2:15 p.m.
So many of the traditional fantasy tropes rely upon distinctions either of class (princes/princesses, lost heirs to thrones, etc.) or that map quickly to class (the aristocracy of those who can use magic, say, lording it over those who can't.) How do we fix this? Who's already done the work that we can look to for examples, and what are the traps we want to avoid?

M: Janine Ellen Young, Hilary Moon Murphy, Meghan McCarron, Laurie J. Marks, Leah Bobet

General Reading Group (Readings)
Saturday, 2:30-3:45 p.m. in Conference Room 2

Pan Morigan, Naomi Kritzer, Amy Beth Forbes, Leah Bobet, Elizabeth Bear, Claudia Amadori-Segree


Also, I am a memewhore:



I must note that the visual design on that website -- and what's there of the concept art, etc. -- is beautiful. This may counter the rumours I keep hearing that they've stripped all the controversial (good) stuff out and left it limp on the ground.

Now, dinner.
Having looked through my stuff, I decided I will not be posting something new for today's impromptu holiday, for a couple reasons*:

1) If you want a picture of the Language Acquisition exam I wrote this morning, imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever. I need to lick my wounds a bit and possibly nap. I didn't sleep well last night, and it didn't help.
2) You really don't want my trunkdump. It got trunked for a reason, ie it doesn't get out of the house with my name on it looking like that.
3) I don't write enough new stories these days to give away the first rights to one of the ones I think are still worth reading.
4) I already webscabbed before it was trendy and the scene sold out. Get off my lawn! :p

So yes, if you are following the free stuff today, take a look at "Apres Moi, Le Deluge", a torrid story of the Singularity, flooding, those wicked SF authors, and the end of the world, linked above. Yes, it's been there for a while. There's also a whack of online fiction linked at the old bibliography.

What? You wanted something new? Get off my lawn!


As an aside, Pearl Jam covering "Love, Reign O'er Me?"

NO.

Whoever thought that was a good idea, if you are reading, please to rethink your life.


*Also, I really am tired of slapfights. That ticked over in my head about Tuesday morning. Sure, it's interesting for three days or so, but four weeks plus? GET A LIFE. Take up gardening or a soothing craft.

Leah Bobet --

[adjective]:

Visually addictive



'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com


Booyah. *g*
QuizGalaxy!
'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com


That's right.

I die the death of a ninja.

Krush this person!
Get your own ThisKrush.com KrushTag!

Now get out there and express your monster truck love for somebody. :D
So, yesterday was pretty well-spent. I didn't finish the paper, but came within a page of doing so before the lightbulb in my brain went out, and I figure I can handle a page this afternoon or evening before having to hand it in tomorrow night. That is, if I don't give in to tiredness and nap (tossed until 4am last night) or flop or read Daughter of Hounds all afternoon 'cause ooh prose pretty. >.>

Also, this morning after my shower when I turned on the computer it told me I had no internet connection again, and for the heart-stopping three minutes between that and when I rebooted again while resetting power to the modem, I thought I was going to have a very bad day. So yeah. Maybe I just want to read Kiernan and not have stress. Yes.

(This post is entirely turning into Why I Should Blow Off Classwork Today.)

But after I do these things, which I will have to do even if I blow them off today, I will want to write fiction. So to stir that up, let's have a rousing rendition of...

...the First Line Meme!

Cut for those who give no figs )
Ah, screw it, let's be self-indulgent tonight. *g*


Gacked from half my friendslist:

Ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you!

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Cristalia on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

Which movie was this quote from?

Get your own quotes:



...ow. :/
Okay, hit me.

my xmas stocking )
It has been a hard week here at the Casa. Therefore, there shall be a silly meme so I may restore my sense of humour.

via [livejournal.com profile] matociquala, the self-abuse version of the Life Soundtrack Meme:

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

Of course, I got a little silly with this... )

Now that was some quality catwaxing.
Okay, we've been pretty damn serious the last few days. It is time for either bunnies or memes, and [livejournal.com profile] truepenny has the bunnies.

Sooo. Like the rest of my friendlist, ask me three questions, any three questions, and I will answer them.

Go!

Baaaaa--

Jul. 21st, 2006 12:27 am
Tired from a long day of bookselling, which seems to wipe my brain out when done for more than four hours at a stretch. So you get the rare, elusive memepost (ganked from [livejournal.com profile] fairmer)!

Heeeere sheepy sheep, good sheep-- )
Spurred by a chatroom conversation on this interesting discussion from Matthew Cheney, I'm interested in your provenance as a reader. What did you start out reading? Which of those authors did you keep, and which discard? Which authors are you reading now?

And, well...why?

I'll start. (and so has [livejournal.com profile] sosostris2012, here)

The list goes ever on and on... )

There are patterns here. At some point around high school, my reading window broadened, I jettisoned a bunch of things I'd been reading since early childhood, and I settled comfortably into a steady diet of fairy tales and hard science fiction. And there are more common elements to those two genres than you'd think: they're both very concerned with the application of fictional (dare I say allegorical, sometimes?) concept to real life, they're both quite grim at times, and they're both...highly structured without being formulaic. They also both have enough of a tradition behind them that they can be subverted within their own text, which is harder to do with high fantasy.

If this partial list can be believed, I read for structure. I read for character, and I read for prose style. I read to know things I didn't before about people and how we work, and I read for shiny ideas, and sensawunda, and rigorous plot logic, and thematic resonance. None of these things are mutually exclusive.

How were your reading habits formed? When? What results in your own data surprised you?

Consider yourselves all tagged.
And I fall to the Johari window thing. Damn, but I feel self-indulgent now. *g*

Also, Elaine has tagged me to 'fess up some of my weirdness in public forums. It has taken me a week to think up weird things that I can discuss -- anything I consider weird is really weird, and well, the rest I keep thinking is normal...

Five Ways I Am That Odd Child Across The Street

1) I cannot actually shake a food craving: like true love and death, it can only be delayed a little while. Food cravings lurk in the back of my head until they are satisfied, picking up steam over however long that takes: sometimes it is years, and the slightest mention of that food or a related foody item will make me ravenous with OCD desire. The current list of things I need to eat at some point includes: french onion soup, Mongolian beef, oysters, and those potato skins with cheese you can get from Pickle Barrel. I took care of the bread pudding one (six months at least in the making) this afternoon at lunch.

2) Whenever I walk by Maple Leaf Gardens on my way to the market, I give it a pat and say hi to Bill. I try to make sure I go by at least once every month, so neither the building or the dead hockey player feel neglected.

3) I can't watch TV without something to do with my hands: I get fidgety and fretty otherwise. Thus, I only sew when it is hockey season and I have three-hour games to watch. In the absence of sewing, I build cities and six-story castles out of Lego.

4) I am generally unfazed by Big Good News -- story sales, getting jobs, course marks, wedding announcements -- things like that just bounce off my head. But there is a pigeon that has lived in Bathurst Station all winter that flew past me into the tunnel on Friday, startling everyone into this weird amazed grinning, and back in October I walked through Queen's Park home from class and stepped on a leaf and suddenly the world smelled like autumn all around.

That, I'm still smiling about.

5) I can drink half a bottle of wine, a whole bottle of sake, five scotches, two pints of Strongbow, or three Long Island Iced Teas without getting a dehydration headache (the number one preventer of Leah getting drunk), but I cannot finish a beer for my life.

Not even a stubby.

Yes. I'm weird. :)

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