I know my PM feature does not work. I don't know why, exactly, but it appears to hate me. So if I've PM'd you and you're trying to reply, post here and I will get back to you as soon as humanly possible.

THIS JOURNAL IS SORT OF FRIENDS ONLY.

A thing you should probably know about me: I'm a prospective college student. That said, I'm currently friends-locking my journal for security reasons, hopefully not forever. I really liked having an open journal - these are the spaces that seem the most free for creative expression and discussion, these rooms with open doors, no lock - and in fact I prided myself on not taking part in the post-Strikethrough '07 paranoia. Unfortunately reality occasionally gets in the way of ethos, and this is one of these times. If you came for fic, don't worry; just comment here, saying why you want access to my junk, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. As for things like fanmixes, I'll try my hardest to leave those unlocked.

Why were you all born within the same bloody three weeks? Anyways -

HAPPY
ALMOST
BIRTHDAY
icarusincalion,
FOR THE
MOTHEREFFING
WIN.

(I will be back soon and talking to ya'll beyond birthday things, I promise! Just, real life has struck. Again.)

HAPPY
(ALMOST)
BIRTHDAY,
redfaerie19!

This text is aligned very strangely, but I trust you get the message.

Bloddy sodding hell. I never thought I'd say this, but I never want to read another history in my life. I think I've spent almost two weeks in a delirium of accents, strange grammar structures, and trying - and failing, miserably - to explain my research verbally in something other than a jumble of short es and blaighs in an American accent. Thank god at least most of the analyses of the Cumann na mBan (basically, the women's IRA) are in English, and I only have to contend with names and places, which still have far too many letters. Máire Nic Shiúblaigh, for instance. I know there must be a logical way to pronounce it but for the life of me I cannot figure out how.

I must say, I have real sympathy for all these historians, because according to them, during the time they are studying, the push for the Irish language was so strong that the Cumann na mBan secretaries were instructed to relay all their internal messages in it. Ouch.

(And yes, like every other speaker of American English, I am incredibly obnoxious when it comes to language! It's like that old joke that my teacher's linguist wife tells: What do you call someone who speaks two languages; three languages; many languages; one language? Answer: bilingual, trilingual, polyglot, American.)

In other news: sorry, internets. I've been pretty much dead to everything that isn't a) term papers, b) college applications, c) play rehearsal, or d) SAT I and II review. (Though at least with the last, I'm almost done with, and what I have gotten back is pretty good, I think, in the high 700s. Which of course makes my 500s math score suck further.) ...But I promise I'll emerge from this! Eventually!

OH MY GOD YES MY SAT TWOS ARE DONE HALLELUJAH HALLELUJAH. In celebration, have more SGA gen fic about grief and life on Atlantis! I appear to really like writing about those. (See The Subterraneans.) Hopefully this will make sense outside of my head, but who knows? I'm on decongestant, oral antibiotics, caffeine pills, and Margaret Atwood poetry, nothing makes sense right now!


TO THE PIONEERS AND THEIR COVERED WAGONS
SGA; PG-13. Gen. Warnings for grief and burial practices.

( Read more... )

"Though answer (C) does show up several times in the passage, answer (E) is the more complete answer."

SAT II Literature exam: ALL ANSWERS ARE RIGHT, BUT SOME ARE MORE RIGHT THAN OTHERS.

*screams*

Look what I found!

SHANKILL BUTCHERS [Vanitashaze's Basement Acapella Remix]

Wow. That's a trip. Mostly I'm sort of proud of it, but just - ignore the third chorus, okay? I'm not sure just what I was thinking. And it's a bootleg in-my-basement recording, so there's random whirring noises, thumps, and the sound quality is not that great. Desktop speakers, be warned. But seriously: wouldn't this be a great song to do a lounge remix of, strings and piano and female voice? Man, I wish I played stuff other than my vocal chords. Though maybe I could get a friend to do that; God knows I've got enough piano-playing friends, and I need some good songs for my college auditions tape. What do you guys think?

(Or the Dead Weather's "So Far From Your Weapon". Or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's "Berlin". That would be awesome with a female front, though she'd really have to belt it out. Or - well, you get the idea.)

Well, you guys, September 29th has rolled around, and it's official: as I feared, I didn't finish my Big Bang.

There are several reasons for this, but surprisingly, the one thing I was really worried about - word-count - was still a problem, but not nearly in the way I expected. I didn't have any problem reaching 40,000 words - my problem was that I was 40,000 words and only halfway done! Most of the things that needed to happen for it to make sense hadn't made it in there yet, and there were a lot of plot points, which I suppose brings me to the second reason I didn't finish. I bit off way more than I could chew, guys. For fear of having no plot and nothing to write about I created this totally complicated one.

In addition to all that, I really should have known better than to have attempted writing a novel in the senior summer of high school, just when Hurricane College is about to hit. I'm applying to a bunch, visiting even more, writing filing cabinets' worth of essays, putting together a visual portfolio, a vocal portfolio, editing my written portfolio. I thought I'd have time, but the truth is, even in July, the palm trees were already starting to rustle.

I may continue this monster; I may not. In any case I suspect that even when I finish it, it'll need to go through several drafts before it's even presentable, much less any good. Because, apparently, that writer who takes thirty-five years to write their masterpiece? Yeah, that's totally me.

So, did I learn things? Yes. Was I glad that I tried it, even if I didn't succeed, so at least I wouldn't have any regrets on that front? Yes.

Am I still pretty fucking disappointed?

Well. You can guess.

So, I'm finally putting all the little pieces together in chronological order and rewriting the gaps, and only now does it occur to me that I may have a problem. Because, the first part? Nearly 10,000 words, and Norina hasn't even gotten onto Atlantis yet. That's not even the first chapter as much as the prologue, and already it's 1/4 of my minimum wordcount, and I think about 3,000 words-worth of it may be completely extraneous to the plot, and I need to write about 3,000 more words in back-story to even get those to make sense.

In conclusion: ERK.

When I signed up for the Big Bang I expected months of hell on wheels, but oddly enough, between bouts of sheer terror, utter blankness, and procrastination, I'm actually having a lot of fun with this project. Unsurprisingly, though, it's gotten rather complex - or at least, there's a lot of crap I'm trying to hit - and for once my Google-fu and anthropology-major mother have both failed me. (Horror!) So, to jump straight to the point: All of you multicultural f-list people, could you try to round up as many images and myths of desire as you can? I already have fruit (duh), Persephone and the pomegrantes, Eve and the apple (or pomegranate), Eden, etc., but I'm sure there are more desire/temptation myths out there, and I could use some fodder.

Recently, Icarus issued a recantation of her criticism of one of her Buddhist teachers, Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, and temple she used to attend, Kunzang Palyul Choling. While I don't support or condone what she did, I recognize the strength it must have taken to not only recognize her mistakes but publicly apologize, and per her wishes, in the hope of everyone finding a little peace: here it is. Be warned: it's not a pretty tale. Icarus lied, manipulated, slandered, and generally just behaved monstrously badly, all to defame her teacher and temple - and protect herself from her own failure at being a nun - which she sees now as a mistake. As part of coming to terms with what she's done and hopefully, making amends, she has written her confession on her journal - "post[ing] [her] clean-up confession just as publicly as [she] once posted [her] criticism" - and asked her friends to pass it around, in hopes that the truth will counteract the lies she once told.

Remember that IB test that I was absolutely positively sure I'd failed? Got my scores back a long time ago but forgot to check them, in essence, today.

"SIX" FOR THE FATHERFUCKING WIN.

Take that, everyone - including myself - who said I wasn't good at math*!


*Even if the score was for IB Math Studies, which is in essence Math for Poets, and so doesn't really count.

1. I love being part of the inner-workings of nonprofits. They're just so fascinating, that combination of altruism and selfishness, caring and depersonalization, the things you want to do brought up short by the things you must. There's something immensely satisfying in seeing the sin-cracks in the saintly plaster. (Though if you don't like gossip, they are not the place for you. Forget lesbian separatist communes: if you want women in your life, to be totally surrounded by them, go into the nonprofit sector! Nary a man you will see, except for when the Big Bosses (the Board, dun dun dun) meet.)

I think I've mentioned before how depersonalized human services get - out of necessity; like doctors, charity-workers think of their "clients" as numbers or moments in time, no sort of grand continuum - but even so, you'd be surprised how much humanity that can be found there. People smile, laugh, make mistakes, make jokes, chat, cry, rage. Even a list of names in a file registry evokes. Hours of re-filing and crouching in crowded hallways is, I think, no one's idea of a good time, least of not mine, but I feel a bit better for a world that apparently contains a Ms. Little John, a Mr. Outlaw, a Yohn, an Orf, an Ogle, an Ours, a Pearline, a Moneymaker, a Muddiman, and as the topper on the proverbial cake, a Billy Justice (who I actually met) and Mr. McFail.

2. Of note: this is hardly a guarantee I'll write anything, because I think it'll be a miracle if I finish everything I'm supposed to within the alloted time. However - you never know. So prompt away! If nothing else, I will be happy to shriek, squeal, and discuss your prompt.

The "You Should Write..." Meme!

...Did it work? No? Drat.

Really, though, why not? This is a good show, people! It's kind of stupid sometimes, but that's okay. Think of all the fun toys we get to play with: Sophie, Parker, Hardison, Eliot, in fact, pretty much everyone except Nate, who's a bit tiresome with his epic angst but sort of essential when it comes to plot, so, damn, we're kind of stuck with him. Whatever. Less Nate-centric episodes, that's the spot - we've had approximately eleventy-bajillion since the first episode, compared to everyone else's two, except for poor Hardison, whom to my recollection got one, as it could be argued that The Mile High Job was centered around him. This is obviously a grievous error, as he is made of nothing but pure and unrefined awesome. Age of the geek, baby. *sighs dreamily* And Parker. Parker is also awesome. They make such an adorable fake FBI team.

Also, fandom, I demand girl!Eliot. Just so you know.

BACTERIAL-INFECTION-OR-POSSIBLY-BRONCHITIS, GET OUT OF MY BRONCHI.

ARGH. The worst of it is that even though my head aches, I'm slingshotting between 100 and 105 degrees, and apparently trying to hack up ten gallons of what looks suspiciously like the remnants of a New Jersey petrochemical plant - wait for it - I'm not actually that sick! Just sick enough to keep from doing the things I want to be doing, but not sick enough to forget that I want to be doing them, if that makes any sense at all. (I find that lately I am, as a rule, not.) In conclusion: sick fail. But I am catching up on Sarah Connor Chronicles, Burn Notice, Nip/Tuck, Kings, and Leverage, so I suppose that's something.

Attention, attention, my marshmallow peeps! The English Major in me would like to take this opportunity to pimp this year's multifandom dvd_commentary challenge. It's very cool, people! You pick someone else's story, instead of your own, and write a commentary on it. Got a favorite fic you think needs some more love? A unique interpretation of a much-contested work? An ending that you're just dying to debate about? This is your chance! The community info post is here. I'm not going to be able to be a commentator this year, for obvious reasons that start with Big and end with Bang - plus all the other insane shit I've signed myself up for - but I did sign up as an allowed-author, so I don't feel completely guilty when I say, CRITIQUE AWAY!

I now present to you, courtesy of my recent Torchwood binge, a deleted scene, from "Meat", and aptly titled, The Measure of a Man. Apparently it was too racy to put on television, but I see that as a grievous error.

1. Arguing with one's parents really sucks. GODDAMNIT LISTEN WHY DON'T YOU. I swear, it's like carrying on a dialogue with Soviet Russia.

2. I owe redfairie19 a whole bunch of fic, don't I? Or, really, well, two. The ghost one and the fix-it. But that's still a lot.

3. BAT FOR LASHES. Like Mirah, she's an artist I've heard a lot about these last few years, but for some reason - perhaps after listening to one of her songs - I was under the impression that I disliked her. So, of course, I'm talking with E about how much I dislike Bat for Lashes, I mean, What's the hype about anyway, and then she turns around and fiddles with something on her computer, and "Prescilla" comes on, and I am like, That is very cool, What is that, and she, of course, turns around and smirks. Now I have a burned copy of "Fur and Gold" and have been listening to it nonstop. I get weird about music sometimes; I don't know. Maybe she just differs from album to album - like Mirah, again - but this one is so much fun. It reminds me of PJ Harvey's Is This Desire?, with a slightly sweeter voice and richer sound, not to say that Harvey's is poorer. It's just starker. Think harsh, stormy salt-cliffs, buffeted by water - that's Harvey, on Is This Desire? Bat for Lashes' Fur and Gold has the same isolation, the same loneliness, but it's softened, somehow, a little more gold than silver. Rubies rather than diamonds. You get the drift.