the boys are very complex and the girls are very pretty

fanmix: un cuento (a love story) [doctor who, rose/doctor & doctor/master]

2008-07-06T07:27:18Z

1. Maybe it was the crappy quality on YouTube, or maybe I'm just missing something, but I for one was not so wildly thrilled about Journey's End. Despite some clear attempts at humor, it mostly felt like one plot device after another, quantity over quality. I suppose that with the set-up that The Stolen Earth left them with, it was a question of wrapping up a lot of threads with cheap thread (the type that breaks too hard), or tying off some with the really high-quality polyester stuff. Couldn't afford both, of course. And the Beeb is nothing but economical.

2. See? I am good at procrastination ~~and posting my stuff all at the same time~~.

Before we begin, though, a quick note about the linkage of this fanmix: Normally, when I make fanmixes, I post links for each individual song, because I know that sometimes, people are just here for the music and couldn't give a damn about my fannish leanings. Then, too, are some who share my fandoms and do care about the music, but don't need another copy of "Wonderwall", or just really, really don't like Portishead. And all of this is perfectly fine, because music is music, and even if it doesn't touch you one way it will, eventually, in another.

This mix, however, is not a collection of separate songs. Like most things, it started out as something else: a Doctor fanmix. But then there was Rose, and just when I'd finished with them, a song would come screaming "Master!". Which got me thinking, really, about the usual limitations of fanmixes, their structure. Unlike fics, they're usually centered around one character, one show, one pairing, and it's good, but not real. People don't fall in love just once, and, at the risk of sounding like a Girl Scout friendship song, love doesn't detract from itself. So I tried to do something different. This mix is a love story, not two.

Which brings me back to my original point: that this mix is meant to be treated as a whole, in the order I put them in, no songs left out. This, to me, is the story of Rose and the Doctor, the Doctor and the Master, the ones he loves but loses. As well as the titles and order of the songs, here is significance, too, in the instruments. Songs for the Doctor are string quartets, or cellos: deep, resonating, layered. Rose I envisioned as the lighter, though no less beautiful, piano (with a bit of Reinette thrown in there as well); the Master, of course, is represented by drums.

...I ramble muchly. SORRY, PEOPLE, SORRY.

Zoe Keating - Exurgency
Bear McCreary - Wayward Soldier
David Byrne - Canal Life
Evanescence Piano Tribute - Taking Over Me
Bear McCreary - Passacaglia
Tori Amos - Over It [EP Version]
Final Fantasy X - To Zanarkand
Vindaloo String Quartet - Teardrop
Ehma - Court Metrage No. 5
Nobuo Uematsu - The Mystic Forest
Together We Will Live Forever - Clint Mansell
Zoe Keating - Legion [Live]
Fryderyk Chopin - Nocturne for Piano No. 20 in C
Javier Navarrete - Un Cuento (A Tale)

Zoe Keating - Frozen Angels
Vas - Ceremony of Passage
Vindaloo String Quartet - Angel

Bear McCreary - Two Funerals [Clip]

[Download]

Comic: Closing Credits [Torchwood, Tosh/Pearl, R]

2008-07-06T02:48:52Z

The other one for the Dogged by Muses: Summer Femslash Advent Calendar.

First foray into the gritty, hormone-fueled world of Torchwood characterization, so, should be interesting. (I mean, it's certainly not off-base that Tosh has got kind of a, well, bad lovelife? So this isn't SO farfetched?) It was also my first time writing & drawing an actual comic, as opposed to a strip (which I'm completely bollocks at anyways); it was interesting. Might do it again sometime, but perhaps in a day and age where I can properly draw clothes, and proportional anatomy.

...But it's colorful. Oh yes.

closing credits
tosh / pearl, tosh / mary
torchwood; r for the nekkid and artistic sex. spoilers for 2.9 From Out of the Rain.

Fic: With Bloom to Spare [Heroes, Claire/Maya, PG-13]

2008-07-03T02:10:32Z

1. SpikeTV is having a Star Wars marathon this week and oh, George Lucas. Futuristic tupperware, Luke's hair, bad Middle-Eastern stereotypes, the attack!Teddies... SUCH CHEESE, but I can't believe how much I've missed it. And it's so strange, seeing them in order—the knowing that Obi-Wan was once young and strong, who is behind the black suit, "that strange old religion" called the Force... It's all so much more poignant, even with the bad special effects.

...I want my very own Yoda. Like, now.

2. Having listened to my newest Psapp album rather obsessively, I can only concur that if crackfic had a theme song, this would be it. I mean, squeaky toy as percussion instrument? Why not?

3. In other news, Meredith!fic is eating my brain. NOTES EDIT REWRITE EDIT REWRITE. This is going to be my mantra for the next ten million years, I know it. But in the meantime, have some shameless fluff. ~~It really is quite soppy.~~ And, please, excuse my high-school Spanish. (Forsooth, it has come back to haunt me.)

with bloom to spare
claire / maya, claire / peter.
heroes; pg-13. vaguely AU. spoilers up to 2.11 Powerless.

Her seventeenth birthday, Claire doesn’t get a present from her boyfriend. Instead, she gets a book on abusive relationships from her favorite and only uncle, that she knows of. Second-hand.

The book, that is.

Ending the Silence, she reads off the cover. Something inside her burns against the cliche.

“Thanks, Peter, but I have an iPod to do that,” she jokes weakly, and pulls it out of her pocket to demonstrate. Nobody laughs. Claire can feel her cheeks heating up and her (healing. corroding.) blood swirling, vanishing into some part of herself like water down a drain.

(That’s the trouble with Peter. You spend so much time around him you forget how cruel, how embarrassing he can get and then, suddenly, he pulls something like this and you remember too late how it’s never a good idea to let your guard down around him.

He means well. That’s the problem.)

“It’s for you,” Peter adds, like a puppy depositing a dropped fledgling on its master’s shoes and expecting praise. “I thought it might help.”

“Help?” she repeats in a perfect, you-are-an-idiot-and-I-can-handle-myself voice. Low tones: shallowly dulcet with hint of rasp, as if barbed wire was coiled in her throat. A tone she perfected talking with her dad.

God, he used to do this sort of thing too. But it wasn’t as bad, then. He wasn’t Peter.

“Help. Look I know you miss him, but—” Claire can tell there’s something just itching, right there on the tip of his tongue, just like she can sense everyone else frantically shaking their heads behind her. Just like she’s itching to take that steak knife she can see over his shoulder out of its butcher block and put it into something very squishy and warm and damn talkative.

It’s funny, what level of violence you can tolerate when you can heal from any wound in under sixty seconds.

“—I know it gets boring, being stuck here,” he finishes lamely. “I thought you could read with Maya for practice. You know. She might....”

He trails off. Matt picks up a spoon and starts fiddling with it. Molly makes the awkward turtle sign under the table.

“Peter,” Mohinder pronounces it Pee-tah, like the bread her dad—like the bread Claire hates, “you do realize that this is not an A-B-C book?”

“Uh, yeah.” Her uncle is fidgeting, awkward in his happiness. He’s the cruelest puppy in the world trying not to go emotional wee-wee on the floor. “I guess it’s kind of a joint gift. You know, for the both of you.” He frowns. “Where is Maya anyway?”

Hiding, probably.

Matt’s chuckles echo in the silence, until Claire gives him a Look and he subsides to red-faced fumbling. Her cheeks are burning; she swears she can feel layers of skin peeling back, the heat of the explosion that ripped apart her home.

"Thank you," she croaks.

Mohinder excuses himself to check a blinking equipment light that he might just have activated with his cell phone. The telepath quickly starts looking for another spoon.

*

Of course the book is second-hand. Peter’s like that: can’t bear to let something go without his fingerprints on it, chasing himself into little balls and giving them away like Claire’s grandmother served up cantaloupe at Sunday brunch. In his mind, if he doesn’t staple a piece of his soul to the envelope it makes a gift is too impersonal.

She opens it later, music echoing softly from her earbuds. The pages are near translucent from being read so many times, top and bottom dog-eared into triangles of varying sizes and neatness. At the beginning of chapter two—“If This is Love, Why Do I Feel So Bad?”—there’s a receipt for a bar in Manhattan.

Friday, it reads in Peter’s childlike script. Sophie’s, 8:30. Meet Nathan. Look good.

It’s easy to picture him like that: dark head bent in low light, pouring over the chapters like this was the eleventh commandment. Pencil tapping at his teeth or at the chair—maybe even taking some notes, underlining a few words in pencil—and then going out and willfully ignoring everything he had just read.

The daydream is nice. The book, however, is stupid and useless. Claire decides to re-gift it to Mohinder for Christmas.

In fact, she’s sure that’s what Peter meant to do all along. He just forgot, or was distracted. Maybe he thought he saw a flying man in the sky and didn’t notice that he was wrapping the wrong book.

Because there’s no way that she needs this. And Peter is always so careful to give people what they need.

*

Heather Nova sits comfortably in her hand, the music knits a baby blanket of security like a grandmother's ghost. The earbuds are a little unfamiliar, the case battered in places hers wasn’t; Claire lost her old iPod that frantic night two and half months ago, along with most of her clothes, her books, all of her teddy bears but one. Material nothings—but when Maya asks shyly if her housemate wants to pray with her, Claire mourns for these things she’s lost instead of the family that went with them.

These days, she feels like a stranger in an even stranger land. Her shirts are all one size too big; hips clingy and she can never shake the nagging that she should stuff the bust with tissues. She feels sudden, sharp empathy for fire victims. Her third week in New York, walking home from her furtive trip to the stop-and-shop, Claire had passed a charity drive at a church.

“One of our flock had her house burn down,” the old, sweet-faced woman at the table had said. Her hands shook with arthritis and Claire thought it figured, that the only ones to try to do something good in the world were the people about to die. “We’re collecting clothes, toys, housewares—anything a family might need. ”

Of course, Claire had said, that’s horrible. If the woman would wait right here—she had some clothes to give, a whole box of them she’d been saving up to donate. Claire had run the three blocks home, already with the feel of cotton-edged charity sliding through her hands. It was only later, standing in front of an empty closet in a silent, dark apartment, that Claire had realized she wasn’t home anymore.

She broke down then and there, crying for at least an hour until her body couldn’t produce any more tears. And then she had called Matt, because the only other person in her contacts was dead.

The next week, Maya arrived.

*

“It means—” Matt pauses, his expression similar to someone who’s run into a wall without noticing. “I don’t—I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask Mohinder?”

Mohinder doesn’t even look up from whatever he’s tinkering with, which is pretty typical. “Hoax: an act intended to deceive. Also see trick, fake, and Peter’s ‘home-cooked meals’, which in fact originate from the deli down the street.”

“I like it when Peter cooks,” Molly says happily. Book fluttering closed on her lap, she’s stripping down clementines with Maya. The peels are being tossed onto the ottoman that looks like someone, probably Mohinder’s father, stole from a dumpster. “At least it’s not pizza. Or curry.”

Matt grins. Maya laughs. The sound is like wedding bells and really good bread, the stuff that’s earthy and sweet, and that has to be the soppiest thing Claire’s ever thought but it’s true.

Mohinder smiles. It’s tight, distracted and often preludes a melancholy shuffle down memory road. He seems to do that a lot. “Well, we all have our ethnic specialties. Curry for me, spaghetti for the Italian...”

“Sicilian.” It’s out before Claire can stop it, and she can feel her cheeks flaming.

The fact that she knows those little details doesn’t mean anything. Not at all.

(Except when it does, but that’s not the point.)

“Sicilian. See? You should be grateful for such a multicultural upbringing.” Molly rolls her eyes in a terrific imitation of Claire’s mother.

It’s Saturday morning—the type that blends instead of bleeds into the afternoon, with light streaming through the curtains like God himself is planning to join the party. Claire’s sprawled loose-limbed at the kitchen table. Nearby Matt’s doing something involving a lot of banging pans, though he’s probably just cleaning up from god-knows-what; the possibility of any actual cooking done by a male here is about a zillion to one. It’s the females that cook—and that means Maya, since all Claire can make are cupcakes and no one in their right mind would let a ten-year-old near a stove.

“ ‘Say you have been lying,” Maya reads carefully (Claire’s mom would have done the voices). “You shall even now be forgiven.’ But at that moment one of the young squirrels lost its head completely.” She does a double take and stops, horrified. Molly and Claire both giggle.

“You look funny,” Molly observes.

In fact, Maya looks like someone has just killed a puppy in front of her. “It doesn’t actually mean losing your head,” Claire tries to explain. “It means to be, uh, to be irrational. No piensa bueno.” Claire’s high-school Spanish is pretty lame, but Maya’s expression clears a little.

“Oh,” she says, and it’s her turn to be embarrassed.

Later, Claire thinks about what her neighbors back in Odessa would have said about this scene. They weren't bad people, just burrowed so far into their ways they thought tradition was the ground under their feet and sky above their heads; some were different, but they were the loners, the fringes, the discontent. Texas is a flaming wheel, throwing off its outliers and drawing itself closer and closer, deep into its own hot heart. Claire thinks of Maya and imagines crowds, burning faces - laughing and yelling for Maya to go back to Mexico. (Which, she tells her subconscious, really doesn’t make much sense, considering Maya’s from the Dominican Republic.)

Then Claire thinks about her Spanish class, how some could only speak Maya’s language enough to make fun of her in it and how Maya can read a novel in theirs. We’re the stupid ones, Claire thinks, and it sounds pretty true. Stupid; stupid and scared of everyone who's different.

(Later, she catches at Maya’s arm and fumbles out a weak, “Could you help me with my Spanish?” She’s heard over and over that generosity is not a trait inherent to mankind but Maya’s face breaks out in a sun of curl-framed contentment, and Claire remembers that they’re something else, something different entirely.)

*

"Me llamo Claire Bennet," she tells the mirror. Her lips form rose-tinged shapes: strange, like talking with a stone in her mouth. "Estoy de Odessa, en Texas. Me encanta a mis amigos."

*

"You've got your backpack?" Matt asks. "And your homework?"

"Yes, Matt," Molly says, a little more theatrical than usual. Claire heard that she wants to try out for the school play. Matt thought it's a good idea, but Mohinder wondered aloud whether or not they would still be there by the time it was ready to perform. (A moment's notice, remember that, he said, and they have, but Molly can't quite shake herself free of the siren-song of spotlights.)

" 'Bye Maya, 'bye Claire," the little girl waves frantically before skipping out the door. Only ten years old, Claire thinks, and for some reason this makes her tired.

"Bedtime again," she announces, only no one notices, and so she goes off to crawl between Mohinder's sheets. He and Matt have been unbelievably charitable in allowing her and Maya to stay. They all depend on each other, this little knot of New York heroes. Walking into each other's lives so much that even when they're not there, Claire can feel their presence—Matt, when he's not policing, and Mohinder, pausing for a breather in the bizarre, deformed waltz he and Sylar are caught in. Molly, with her oh-so-stable home life. Hiro, when he's not in the past, future, or a different time zone, busy being a Big Damn Hero. Peter, when he's not—well, wherever he goes. Sometimes even the Haitian, and damn if that's not a little bit creepy, having him hang about in the shadows, but Maya is of course so unfailingly warm and welcoming that Claire feels bad for holding back.

That's one of the many things she hates about being in hiding—there's no such thing as your space, your street addresses may change so many times you have to write the current one in your hand in permanent marker, but the hardest is that you're never alone. And at the same time, you always are.

*

"Me llamo Claire Bennet. Estoy de los Estados Unidos. Me encanta mi familia."

*

Mornings are sun-tinged, the smell of casabe and crackle of radio chatter draped over everything like a fishnet. Maya listens to real Latino music—the type that rattles every commercial kitchen and car wash for miles, shook chili peppers in your blood and made them burn. Once, Claire asked Maya to introduce her, as if the music were an interesting friend of a friend, and Maya sung a folk lullaby before she remembered that her brother had taught it to her. They spent that day at a church, lighting candles for a man that would never have a grave or rest, as long as his other half lived on.

Sometimes, Claire thinks they have more in common than they think. There's Sylar, of course, and genetics, but Claire had West, Maya had her brother's wife. ("I was like a sister to that bitch," she had confessed, and as Claire had held her through her sobs she thinks of the kind of sister Maya was, the kind Alejandro had and held, and wonders if Maya was getting her English terms mixed up again.) Fathers and brothers—family, men they loved—died for them; they know want, and they know revenge, be it a speeding car or a creeping fluid.

West is gone though, and Maya has left Sylar to Mohinder. To this terrifying, ridiculous dance that's so easy to lose oneself within the measured paces; to the endless stream of shitty apartments in downtown New York—one step ahead or one step behind Maya and Claire, depending on the week. Sometimes she wonders if she could ever step to that rhythm, write her own words on the wall. "I couldn't," she tells herself every time, out loud just to be sure, as her mind whispers brown-skinned songs and black-eyed beats & says yes, you could.

*

(Maya told stories, after finding out about Claire's crush on Peter, about crawling into bed with Alejandro when they were little, and how they kept doing it when they were older. They didn't do anything, though, didn't even talk - just slept, side by side. It's hot in Dominica, Maya says. Claire's not quite sure what that means.)

*

"Me llamo Claire. Estoy—soy especial. Me encanta a Peter Petrelli."

*

She runs, endlessly, panting and out of breath. Kicking up dust, her father at her heels, the Company at his, and the one she loves looking for his brother like that Greek guy, the one who looked over his shoulder and broke the faith. God, sometimes her life is a classicist's wet dream.

Yesterday she helped Peter build a shrine for Simone - just wax stubs and graduation photos and love you, never forget hung over it all like a birthday banner. She blew out all the candles, after he had left to brood, and then felt so bad that she re-lit them. In the bathroom she carved the word - Peter - in her arm and it disappeared into her skin. She wonders if that's how Maya feels with the black ooze.

(It's something inside, Maya had said. A sickness that comes out of me black. Claire can relate.)

Peter's wanted by too many, she knows. She's seen his dance around Mohinder, the glances Elle shot his way, the touches from Nathan. She's seen him been hero-worshipped by Hiro, and cry over Adam's grave.

The fact is, Peter could be gay. He certainly has the hair for it, and testosterone has (thank god) never been one of his identifying traits. Only, he isn't. He never will be, because that would mean closing himself to some people, and he couldn't do that.

Peter loves indiscriminately. It's the cruelest part about him.

*

"I kissed him and he killed my brother."

"It's not your fault. You were coerced."

"But I kissed him." Apparently, it wouldn't have been as bad if Sylar had kissed her. It's times like these (always, never) that Claire does not understand Maya.

*

It takes her a while to realize it, but Claire misses cheerleading. She shows Maya a cheer on day, feeling stupid and ridiculous and stripped down to the ligaments, but Maya laughs, smiles in that way that makes her eyes smile for her, and shows her how to dance—"in a way," she says in halting, stone-edged words, that she hasn't since her brother's wedding. Light touches to her hip, her arms, putting her into position, and Maya smells good, really good. Claire thinks about asking what it is, in a strictly recon-ish way—maybe it's a shower gel, something she could borrow—but that would really require too much effort, what with the translation and all. Instead, she decides to just guess and memorize for later, just in case she recognizes it somewhere.

Claire leans as close as she dares, and breathes deep.

Cinnamon. A hint of the clementine peels that keep piling up next to her bed, citrus under bitten fingernails. Cheap, generic shampoo. Some seasoning Claire associates with kitchen and spicy food, but not the spicy of Mohinder's better have water nearby curry nights, the stuff he says clears his head so he has room for genetics.

"Happy?" Maya asks. She has noticed Claire's sudden grin.

"Yes," Claire says, absently. "Of course."

*

Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya Maya

Claire likes the way it feels on her tongue.

*

"Are you alright, Claire?" Mohinder is concerned, hints of fatherhood creeping into his voice like kids out past their curfew. It reminds her of her father — not the dulcet tones but the concern, the dry heat of it.

Her eyes sting, but she tells herself it's probably because of the onions Maya's chopping.

"Yeah," she says, "I'm fine, why?"

"Nothing." Her eyes follow the glistening shape of his curls, the endless twists and eternal loops, circling round and round again. "You just seem... different lately. I would have thought, with Peter gone—"

He trails off, obviously trying to figure out what to say next. For a genius, Claire thinks, he doesn't seem to plan too far ahead.

"I don't know, maybe it's something in the water," Claire says. "Or maybe my taste-buds are finally recovering from all that spicy food."

"Really?" Mohinder asks, curious. "I would have thought, with your ability—perhaps certain types of cells regenerate at different speeds—"

"I was joking," she says, flat.

"Oh. I see," he says, but she knows that he really doesn't, not at all.

*

Maya's bed is how a bed should be, worn comfortable blankets that don't match at all and look better for it. Claire likes it much better than her store-bought, ready-made sea of confectionary pink. That's what she tells herself when she starts to sneak into it—after Maya's asleep, of course, and waking up before the other woman does. She just likes the bed better, that's all; likes waking up warm and slipping into pre-dawn darkness, leaving the shape of her behind in the mattress.

(And sometimes, in the breaking quiet, she thinks she might like waking up in the sun even more.)

*

"Me llamo Claire," she tells herself. "Me encanta."

meme: sexy women

2008-07-01T09:10:24Z

From molly_commas (I'm starting to notice a pattern here):

RULES:

1. Compose a list of your top ten sexiest famous women.
2. Collect one picture of each woman on your list.
3. Post them in your journal/blog.
4. Tag 3 people to do the same.

Apparently, I have pretty conventional taste, a fondness for certain characters the actresses play more than others, and a thing for hips & strong cheekbones. Yayz.

1. Eve Myles
Confession time: I have a huge crush on Eve Myles, practically from the first episode. She's one of those rare people that manage to be cute and lovely at the same time, and as an actress she's not half-bad. (Her accent is so great; she makes me want to be Welsh.)

2. Helena Bonham Carter
Especially her frizzier-haired incarnations. I mean, HBC-Bellatrix: CRAZY sexy (and, of course, just plain crazy).

3. Queen Latifah
Not only is she beautiful - in a very friendly, nice kind of way - and a good actress, QL is probably the person on this list I'd most want to be friends with. She seems pretty cool, approachable and proud and interesting. (Though why does she look so orange in this picture? *grumbles* )

4. Angelina Jo.lie
Do I even need to explain this one?

5. Zhang Ziyi
Or, "the reason why I spent most of Memoirs of a Geisha grinning like a stunned duck." Someone once said that Asian women are the most naturally beautiful women in the world, and if Ziyi's any example, I'd have to agree!

6. Keira Knightley
Knightley was among my first few celebrity crushes. Lately, she's gotten a bit ~~skeletal~~ skinny for my tastes, but she's still quite beautiful. For instance: those eyes...

7. Olivia Wilde
Let's just get this out here, once and for all: I don't like Thirteen. Though I would happily listen to Wilde reading through the phonebook, I also think that during her time on House, she's done her best to voice no emotion besides shock and a flat sort of contempt. Thirteen's eye candy, plain and simple. But I never said she wasn't effective eye candy. Because she is. She's so beautiful it's scary.

8. Beyonce Knowles
Mmm. Hips. ♥

9. Catherine Zeta Jones
After I saw Chicago for the first time, I dragged my best friend over and made her watch it. First words out of her mouth? "Who is that?"
"Catherine Zeta-Jones," I replied, too enraptured to look away.
"...Oh. Wow."

10. Naomi Campbell
So she's apparently an airhead, and stars in really bad movies. Not so great. But she's gorgeous. That sort of makes up for it, right?

Tagging: can I pull a molly_commas and tag everyone-and-anyone? (I mean, I think everyone is already compiling one of these.)

ETA: I just realized: out of a ten-person sexy!list, two starred in Chicago. Huh. This probably tells you what I thought of the movie.

HALP!

2008-06-27T05:30:43Z

One of my RL friend-colleague suggested that I send this out to far and sundry, so here it is:

These are all sample logos for CrisisLink's youth outreach program, soon to hit the streets. CrisisLink is a crisis-and-resource hotline centered in N. Virginia, and a cause very near and dear to my heart, as I've spent countless hours filing, proofing newsletters, licking stamps, painting walls, bringing coffee to the operators, and just generally being a helpful nuisance to everyone. We are in desperate need of feedback for these, as we've kind of reached an impass; we're holding back the presses so far, but they're definately chomping at the bit. So, my lovely f-list, here is your mission, if you choose to accept it (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do):

Which of these logos would most inspire you to call / volunteer? Which is your favorite?

ETA: Thanks, all!

fanmix: transit [heroes, young meredith]

2008-06-27T01:52:45Z

1. If anyone has a few minutes to spare, I would love them forever if they could give their input for this. It's for a good cause, people!

2. First Heroes fanmix, and it's for a character that gets twenty minutes of screentime for the entire two seasons.

...But she is sort of awesome, yes?

[Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova] Drown Out
You were burned out
And had to stop before all hell broke
And finally took its toll
And save our souls were playing dead
And mine for gold in a heart of lead
And turn around and save yourself
We found our way and blocked it out
[Download]

[Sufjan Stevens ft. Rosie Thomas] The One I Love
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I left behind
A simple thought to occupy my mind
This one goes out to the one I love
Fire, Fire
Fire, Fire
[Download]

[Jose Gonzales] Teardrop
Love, love is a verb
Love is a doing word
Fearless on my breath
Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter
Fearless on my breath
...
Teardrop on the fire
Fearless on my breath
Stumbling a little
Stumbling a little
[Download]

[Kings of Convenience] Surprise Ice
When past sometimes takes you with soft hands,
Forcelessly pulls you to your chair.
Hides you away from these half days,
Sunless at the end of the year.
The air is like a knife cutting through you,
A room in the house is always warm.
Stretched out on the bathroom floor, thinking,
Of fair days your future may hold.
Love comes like surprise on the water,
Love comes like surprise ice at dawn.
[Download]

[Holly Brook] Like Blood, Like Honey
You wanna catch your breath, you wanna get out
But as you surface, you don't really know how
How to live upon the solid ground
Well, sometimes it's just easier to let yourself drown
Love is thick
Like blood, like honey
You cannot spell it out, there are no words
Mrs. Johnson never taught me those verbs
On how to give myself and how to receive
It is something that's inside of you and me
[Download]

[Stairsailor] Tie Up My Hands
Wipe the make-up from your face
Tie your hair and gently fall from grace
Until I come again
Take the dissafected life
Men who ran the Company ran your life
You could have been his wife
...
Wipe the shadow from your eyes
Rest your daughter while your mother cries
You could have let him fly
[Download]

[Guillemots] Falling Out of Reach
Slow down, slow down
You'll only get burned out
Calm down, calm down
You're getting so worn out
They're trying to make you compromise
This fire burning in your eyes
...
Home is just a word now
You don't see it anymore
The child's eyes are vacant now
The lights are just a glare
[Download]

[Over the Rhine] Born
I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I'm gonna learn to love without fear
Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows, what we'll find
[Download]

[Heather Nova] Sugar
On the Vermont Transit Bus I leaned my arm into a little chink of sun, going somewhere older than I was, strapped into something tight, keeping me small. I dug into you like rock climbing: too scared of coming down, too scared of going up, too scared of rockface. I should've split my sides or spilled my guts or hit you or something, but I was good.
Oh, when the cock crows, when the morning comes where will I go?
When the cock crows, when the love is gone where will I go?
And when you got me pregnant I stopped the party and I stopped the typewriter and I stopped your dumb ball game in the red barn and I stopped your father and bled instead. And I felt the lie - something sticky on the inside; a bitter wind in my throat, stopped me wanting, in my stomach, in my head
[Download]

[Iron & Wine] Woman King
Black horse fly, lemonade
Jar on the red ant hill
Garden worm, cigarette
Ash on the window-sill
...
Hundred years, hundred more
Someday we may see a
Woman king, bloodshot eye
Thumb down and starting to weep
[Download]

[Damien Rice] Rootless Tree
What I want from you is empty your head
They say be true, don't stay in your bed
We do what we need to be free
And it leans on me, like a rootless tree...
...
So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
And all we've been through
I said leave it, leave it, leave it
There's nothing in you
[Download]

[James Taylor] Mexico
Oh, Mexico
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low
Moon's so bright like to light up the night
Make everything all right
Baby's hungry and the money's all gone
The folks back home don't want to talk on the phone
She gets a long letter, sends back a postcard; times are hard
Oh, down in Mexico
I never been so I don't really know
[Download]

[Zip.]

Bonus: This song isn't on the fanmix, because I felt it didn't quite mesh with the sound of it, but I had to include it somehow. It is such the perfect Meredith-song. And, of course, it's Vienna Teng. You cannot go wrong with that combination.

[Vienna Teng] Shasta (Carrie's Song)
So far, so good
You're coming to the bend at the end of the road
You put a hand to the belly that's foreign more
With every day like an oversize load
And you're thinking about clouds the color of fire
And the scent of an orange peel
The way Mt. Shasta explodes into windshield view
And your hands steady on the wheel
...
And you're thinking about how someone died that day
The you that was so carefully planned
But then again maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain
Waking up to shape the land
[Download]

meme time! (you know you want to.)

2008-06-25T17:07:35Z

From molly_commas:

Reply to this post with the answers to these questions so that I can get to know you better. Then post it on your journal so you can get to know your flist.

GENERAL
1. Name:
2. Birthday:
3. Where do you live:
4: What are you studying/What are you working as:
5. What makes you happy:
6. What are you listening to now/have listened to last:
7. What is particularly good / bad about my LJ:
8. An interesting fact about you:
9. Are you in love / have a crush at the moment:
10. Favorite place to be:
11. Favorite lyric:
12. Best time of the year:
13. Weirdest food you like:

RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A song:
4: A tv show:
5. A comic / graphic novel:

FANDOM
1. Favorite Fandom:
2. OTP/OT3:
3. Icon / Fic Journal (so I can join):

PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Put this in your lj so I can tell you what I think of you?

fanmix: kings [torchwood, captain jack/captain john]

2008-06-22T05:43:01Z

1. Graggh. I need to finish all these fic-fragments on my computer before it sizzles and dies (or I do). Must... summon... motivation...

2. The literary cycle is weird. I hated the Narnia books when I was younger (along with Tolkien and Twain and almost every other classic writer), but having recently re-watched Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I want fic. Fic about a movie based on a book that I would never read.

Hmm.

...In any case, Caspian recs. Got any?

3. Warning: this fanmix really doesn't make sense, and is in no way consistant. (Which is sort of on par for my stuff.) But here it is regardless - because, come on. The boys need love too.

[Alphabeat] Fascination
Passion is our passion,
In the moonlight, on a joyride,
Easy rising,
Killed the young dudes
in the high boots. (oh yeah)
Fascination, fascination
It's just the way we feel
We love this exaltation
We want the new temptations
It's like a revelation
We live on fascination
[Download]

[Garbage] Never Be Free
This is the place where dreams begin
I wait right here for you, my friend
I shiver underneath your skin
A brazen thief who walks right in
Oh, you can beat yourself up to the beat of a drum
You can drink 'til you drop, 'til you can't stand up
(And it tastes so sweet, it tastes so sweet)
You'll never forgive me, you'll never be free
You might as well kill me, you'll never be free
[Download]

[Sneaker Pimps] Sick
I'm playing games with your sex, with your electric shocks
Learn to let myself loose and be the dummy in your snapshots
I'm playing games, learn to get on with your backward fans
...
I'm playing games, if you play I'm in the fast lane
Learn to jump into the road and learn to save a little lost face
And maybe then you wouldn't get so sick of me
And maybe then you wouldn't get so sick of me
[Download]

[!!! (Chk Chk Chk)] There's No Fucking Rules, Dude
Ten stories high, staring down from Sears tower,
watchin' cars crawl, watchin' trucks crawl at snail's pace
It's rush hour all the people look like ants from this high
And the buildings look like anthills from the sky
Watch 'em shop in supermarkets, dating rituals in bars
So what, so what?
Your wont's and cant's, your wallflower stance just get down,
A species so advanced but we still look like ants
[Download]

[The Bird & The Bee] Man
Don't take my word, I've lost my head
I need my bed, I promise you my bird
When I awake all sweet and sound, without a care or woe
I'll thank you dear, I'll kiss you love, no matter friend or foe
...
Oh oh oh, don't look
I've lost my way. I'll button up,
hold out my cup, and beg for a cliche
I have no rights to a complaint
I guess it's just a little nuts
We're all a bit insane
[Download]

[Smashing Pumpkins] Adore
You'll always be my whore,
'Cause you're the one that I adore
and I'll pull your crooked teeth,
You'll be perfect, just like me
In you I feel so dirty, in you I crash cars
In you I feel so pretty, in you I taste God
We must never be apart
[Download]

[The Orion Experience] The Cult of Dionysus
We'll start a secret society for the wild and free,
Our ideology is "you can do what you want,
too much is never enough".
We are the life, we are the light
we are the envy of the gods above...
I'm feeling devious, you're looking glamorous.
Let's get mischevious, and polyamorous.
Wine and women and wonderful vices -
Welcome to the cult of Dionysus!
[Download]

[Imogen Heap] Hide and Seek (Strings Remix)
Where are we? What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to fall,
Crop circles on the carpet, sinking, feeling.
Spin me round again and rub my eyes.
This can't be happening.
When busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy.
...
Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth,
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper cut-outs
Speak no feeling, no I don't believe you.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
[Download]

[Emiliana Torrini] Dead Things
You're like me, we're both alone
(What's the problem? I don't know)
...
I let the snow melt in my mouth
Until my head hurts, until I'm out
Makes me laugh a bit, makes me cry
...
Bad things, dead things
Sad things happen to happen
Sometimes
[Download]

[Shiny Toy Guns] Le Disko
Hello little boys, little toys
We're the dreams you're believing
Crawling up the walls, running down your face
Razor sharp, razor clean
Feel the weapon's sensation
on your back, with loaded guns
...
So what's it gonna take?
Silver shadow believer, spock rocker
With your dirty eyes
It's a chance, gonna move
Gonna fuck up your ego
Silly boy, gonna make you cry
[Download]

[Ladytron] The Last One Standing
You said I make, you said, you said I made
A bad decision, said I made a mistake
Fatal without the recognition
...
Closing the doors and I am running
Past video stores, and you are driving
A barrier stands between your hands and me,
Sorry
(You have got to be the last one standing
You have got to be the last one standing)
[Download]

Zip.

get smart: once again, teh gay saves los angeles

2008-06-21T04:28:12Z

So, Get Smart: ahahaha. I'm not saying it was astoundingly intellegent; most of the humor was fairly simple, less dry than the original (or so Mr. Rainer and my mother say). And there were bits that I think were supposed to connect and make sense, but kind of... failed. For example, the comment about the "night before", which as I remember they (Carroll and Hathaway) spent blowing up a bakery. (Was there something I missed there?) Also, I would have loved to see more of the agent - paperpusher feud, and just more of Masi Oka in general, even though he's not nearly as funny as a fluent English-speaker. Meanwhile, Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson was funny in the first half but had about the emotional range of his namesake - which, to my surprise, had the effect of making his character... thought-provoking, I suppose. Motivation? Attatchment? It didn't seem to make sense, and not just his acting. Bad writing, too, probably, but hey. Lemons make lemonade. & of course, Maxwell Smart (Steve Caroll) was adorable, Hathaway was vapid but quite pretty to look at, and thank god for Alan Arkin.

All in all, it was entertaining, and at least I can go away satisfied that Carroll got a longer on-screen kiss with The Rock than he did with Hathaway.

ETA: Also, my headphones are only working in one ear. What the hell, manufacturers? I mean, sure, I accidently stomped on the little pointy bit and kind of dropped them down the stairs, and bent said pointy bit back and forth and back and forth, but still. I expected better of you.

ETA#2: Dexter. Squee, squee, squee. If you do not mind a helluva lot of blood but love psychological fuckery, watch this show.

no. no, no, no!

2008-06-18T22:00:34Z

Dear Yahweh, or Weather Gods, or Al Gore or whomever it may concern: no.

Not another thunderstorm, please, not when we just got our power back on yesterday! Honestly, I think we've all had enough of the leaking and trees falling on things and the runs on bottled water and m'dog making for the highest ground and deciding that it lies on top of my head.

We get it - global warming is bad! Now kindly stop with the booming and flashing and...

Oh, bugger.

scary sherry: sorority girls do not make good toast

2008-06-15T07:17:26Z

1. As much as I like their music - they're about the only thing on the radio that I can actually tolerate, these days - I cannot figure out what is going on with the Flobots' music video for "Handlebars". The animation is all kinds of cool and I like the storyline (?!), but it doesn't have anything to do with the song. I always saw it as something like Jann Arden's "Love Is A Battlefield", a ~~Claire/Elle theme~~ anthem-for-the-young sort of thing: celebrating the little things, all the dorkiness and fail and win and mundane. Is it possible that this song is about something completely different, or were the music-video makers simply dying to use the blood-spatter technique they stole off Sin City? (& as far as said storyline goes - I can honestly say that this is the first music video for which extensive slash fanfic could be written for. Or, at least the first one I've seen. I mean... I like it. I want graphic novels and fics and fanmixes about it. Is that strange?)

2. Been working my way through all the episodes of Psych I've missed - and for only two seasons, there seems to be a lot - and I have had two revelations. Shawn/Lassie = ♥, and despite being kind of out of sync with the rest of the series, "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast" was the best Psych episode so far. Without doubt.

The vague creepiness, Mary Lou, how the myth of Scary Sherry wove through the whole thing; that the significance of it kept going, even after they revealed that Sherry never jumped...
- The editing gave me chills; the flashback technique Psych uses is always good, but there it was just so... creepy. Off-putting.
- The fact that if Shawn and Gus hadn't started the myth, Doreen might've still been alive.
- Doreen herself.
- Even though she was a deranged pyromaniac with fluffy hair, I loved Alice. I think the question she raised - "what would you do?" - was especially unsettling, especially since we learned what Shawn would do, which was to make fun of a friend who is, in their mind, in a highly dangerous and frightening situation. & the rings just broke my heart.
- (The candles! Don't forget the candles!)
- Lastly, the scene with Lassie and the crew, at the very end. Where Lassie learns how his co-workers think of him, and his disappointment, his alienation... and then someone tosses him the cookie, and he gets that little smile on his face... I didn't like "From Earth to Starbucks" even though a lot of people say it is the quintessential Lassie episode, because I felt that though they got off on the right (drunken) foot, they spent most of the episode making fun of him. Like, it wasn't Shawn & Co. helping Lassie because they felt badly, but because they felt the need to highlight the "Lassie is a bad detective who obviously can't handle his cases on his own" angle even more. But with "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast", they did more with four minutes and a fortune cookie than the whole fifty of the other. In an episode mostly about the consequences of our actions, the end was surprisingly touching, from almost every angle you could look from.

3. I do not know what's going on with this. But then again, it is French.

From the French TV channel "Canal Plus" for English week, November 2007. The add apparently says "Together, let's warm up French/English relations". The French are represented by the frog; the English by the roast beef. And I do not think there's anything I could say to make it even more ridiculously funny than it already is.

hey, officer krupkie: fuck you

2008-06-05T00:01:09Z

Dear parents: Stop threatening to call the police on me every time we have an argument. It lowers my respect of you to the level of our president's approval ratings, and that is not good. Worse is when you call the police, and they actually come.

Christ. Tearful shouting matches are so 2007 - now we have tearful shouting matches with a policewoman telling me I have to talk to my mum, or go to juvie. And, of course, another two squad cars parked in my driveway. Since when are our finest supposed to be dishing out this shit? Obviously we need a higher crime rate in my town, as the police have nothing to do and thus respond to the stupidest calls. (While nearby, people are getting killed because there are too many.)

fanmix: we are torchwood [torchwood, alice/emily]

2008-06-04T13:31:17Z

1. So, last Saturday I saw the Shakespeare Free-For-All production of Hamlet with my cohorts. Despite the fact that - in typical Wash D.C. fashion - it poured most of the day and was disgustingly hot the rest of it, it was actually a rather pleasant experience. Most of the time was spent sniggering over the Hamlet/Horatio. It was an unusually energetic performance, really. Jeffrey Carlson (the actor playing Hamlet) was flopped around a LOT. And the first time he and Horatio were onstage together, he jumped on top of him.

Also, I discovered that there are Shakespeare graphic novels. How cool is that?

2. After reading cerebel's Chase The Higher Ground, I want to see Iron Man again. And Prince Caspian, even though it made me cry.

3. 3rd of the Turchwyd femslash mixes, completed even if it's a little late. (And yes, Alice and Emily are the infamous Torchwood Lesbians. You know the ones.)

Carbon [Tori Amos]
where the world bleeds white
just keep your eyes on her, keep
don't look away
keep your eyes on her horizon
bear claw free fall
a gunner's view black and blue
shred in ribbons of lithium
blow by bow, her mind cut in sheets
layers deep now unraveling
just keep your eyes on her
[Download]

Halcyon (Beautiful Days) [Mono]
[instrumental]
[Download]

Hands Clean [Alanis Morisette]
You're essentially an employee and I like you having to depend on me
You're kind of my protege and one day you'll say you learned all you know from me
I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian
I know you sexualize me like a young thing would and I think I like it
Ooh, this could get messy
But you don't seem to mind
Ooh, don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime
[Download]

Shake The Sheets [Ted Leo & the Pharmacists]
She said, "Roll out and make your mark. Pull on your boots and march.
Then roll and meet me where you'll find me doing my own part.
Roll out your dented car. Maybe it won't roll far.
But if you do everything you can, well babe, that's more than a start."
...
So there's no end to work, so there's no end to the murk.
So everything else is dirt, but I am pure and steady.
So cut out the morbid verse. I know you'll make it work.
And how're you gonna save the world, when the world ain't ready?
[Download]

Step Into My Office, Baby [Belle & Sebastian]
I'm a slave to work
I'm only living when I walk amongst the office staff
And catch up with the office wag, I'll be in bed by nine
My curtains drawn, my thoughts composed
I get to work on time
...
We need to talk, so step into my office, baby
I want to give you the job, a chance of overtime
Say my place at nine?
[Download]

Die Young (Black Sabbath Cover) [Gerion]
Behind the smile, there's danger and a promise to be told,
You never get old. Life's fantasy - to be locked away
and still think you're free, you're free, we're free!
So live for today, tomorrow never comes
Can't you see the writing in the air?
Die young, gonna die young
[Download]

A Sound That Only You Can Hear [K's Choice]
I feel you and you feel me as I feel you
It's good, it's scary
The speed, the heat, it's deep and steep
It's light but hard to carry
...
Your hands, my mouth, your mouth, my hands
The weight of what we're thinking
No words, the air we breathe
It's not liquid, but we're drinking
[Download]

Coconut Skins [Damien Rice]
Oh, you can hold her eggs
But your basket has a hole
You can lie between her legs and go looking for
Tell her you're searching for her soul
You can wait for ages
Watch your compost turn to coal
...
No need to know what you're doing or looking for
[Download]

Metal Heart [Cat Power]
Losing the star without a sky, losing the reasons why
You're losing the calling you've been faking, and I'm not kidding
It's damned if you don't and it's damned if you do
...
Metal heart, you're not hiding
Metal heart, you're not worth a thing
[Download]

Bonus: Sweet Sangria [Tori Amos]
I know you know every desperado
and sharp shooter in the west
You say that I can't see behind the mask
of those who call themselves
the good guys in this
who take and take
"So are you with me or not," you say
"This time decide"
...
A no window I ask you, give me a bloodless road
Tell me why does someone have to lose?
[Download]

Zip.

to my wonderful, fantabulous f-list : in search of comic beta

2008-05-30T04:12:03Z

As some of you may know, the Dog Days of Summer Femslash Advent Calendar is coming up, and submissions are due in... let's see, two days. Christ. Why did I sign up for this, when I know deadlines are not my friends?

Anyways - doing a fic and that's all covered, but for my second day I've decided to try my hand at comic'ing, despite having the artistic skills of the common poodle. It's mostly done, but of course, I have doubts over some things. So, I would be very, very grateful to anyone willing to give it a few quick once-overs and send some graphic advice my way. (Keeping in mind that I might not get it to you until Saturday afternoon.)

icons: yes i do love the blur brush, why do you ask? [doctor who, heroes, atonement, torchwood]

2008-05-22T23:15:07Z

1. If you love Life on Mars, are vaguely familiar with Ashes to Ashes and want to distract yourself from the oncoming ~~storm~~ U.S. version, go read trinityofone's absolutely fabulous "Nature Boy", found here and here. Yes, it is a WIP and the chapters are long, but it will BLOW YOU OUT OF THE WATER. (Or at least, it did for me.)

2. Icons! Long weekends do have their uses, after all.

Preview:

Some random Atonement and Doctor Who...

1	2	3

4	5	6

...And a round of My Cast Is Prettier Than Yours, featuring... well, everybody else.

1	2	3

4	5	6

7

...And a Turchwyd [FRIENDS ONLY] banner. Which looks better full-size (hint, hint).

and now i can sign my emails "v" with a special sort of glee

2008-05-22T20:09:22Z

I just finished steamrolling through the V for Vendetta collection I borrowed from m'friend and, wow. How much do I love this?

A lot.

fanmix: i am my father's daughter [doctor who, jenny]

2008-05-20T01:24:38Z

I shrink to admit it, but once I got over the... er, blondeness, I did end up liking Jenny the Knock-Off Time Lady. Why? Who knows. It certainly wasn't her perpetually overexcited demeaner, or her "Toxic" routine, or jail-escaping skills, or the rather questionable fact that she was born wearing eyeliner. To be completely honest, her most appealing factor was probably the way that the other characters played off of her. For instance, the Donna-Jenny dynamic. We had all expected the Doctor-Jenny thing to be going on, and it was great (from Tennant's side, anyway), but I for one did not anticipate Donna doing the maternal and actually making it... nice. I aw'd.

To The Bone [Deb Talan]
Can't say goodbye, we never really met
You just burnt my bed and tore out the stars and kissed my forehead
Now I am an ache that fell into a hole and you were the sky
You opened wide, soaked to the bone and I'm so cold
[Download]

Velocity Girl [Snow Patrol]
Velocity girl,
What makes you go so fast
...
Velocity girl
Can I though your hand
Can I move it here
Don't you understand?
[Download]

Boys Wanna Fight [Garbage]
The boys wanna fight
But the girls are happy to dance all night
Is there anybody else?
What a mess we've made, it's ridiculous
The whole wide world's a stage of complete chaos
[Download]

Don't Cry Out [Shiny Toy Guns]
I was pretending
Your secret kiss of confidence
Was my escape, the perfect game to play
...Don't cry out...
...Cease fire...
Ten nine eight and I'm breaking away
I'm all dressed up and I'm ready to play
Seen six five four and I'm all over you
Counting three two one and I'm having fun
[Download]

Dog Star Radio [Joydrop]
Slowly burning, the slow burn of this planet's turning
Here we are praying to the dog star
In gods we've trusted, all the meanings of our lives
...
On the dog star radio love still heals
On the dog star radio hate still kills
[Download]

Birthday [The Bird & the Bee]
Who knows your hands
Who knows the sum,
The sum of all your parts?
Who knows your limit
Who knows your highest,
Who knows your lowest?
[Download]

Clean and Gold [An Angle]
So come up, it's clean and gold
I'm sinigng at the top of my throat
Why does the wind blow?
Why do the trees grow so old?
You are shouting at the sky,
"Come on God, let me die,
And I don't care at all,
I'm coming right down to the shore."
Well hey kid, don't you worry.
I got the greatest answer from my baby girl,
it's darling I love you
[Download]

Start the Fire [No Doubt]
The army of words is in me
Silent the soldier weeps
Lying here back to back
Waiting for you to be react
Sometimes all I need is a good push
Roll over and whisper some goodness
Go on, baby, you be the hero
[Download]

Zip.

ginger beer does not seem to have much of a shelf life

2008-05-19T00:01:40Z

Re: The Unicorn and the Wasp...

According to redscarlach, this is the first episode they filmed with Catherine Tate, and it really shows - not just the snappy dialogue typical to Doctor Who, but a lot of good physical comedy. I quite liked it, really, and LOL'd at the ginger beer comment.

I did have one bone of contention, though: the death of Roger, which struck me as... well, pointless. What further irks is that it probably wouldn't have been written into the script except for his "constitutionals" with the footman.

For that matter, does anyone remember any gay couple in the Whoverse - nay, any dramashow - that aren't main characters, and still manage to survive past the credits?

yes, i'm weird, but so are you.

2008-05-15T22:44:28Z

Does this even count as fic, or just publicity for the Just Say No campaign?

monologue for a lunatic
gen. heroes; pg-13.
& all the usual spoilers.

Call me Gabriel, call me God. I AM GOD, YOU KNOW. In every head I split is a pebble-continent buffeted by dark waters, ocean congealing salty as the landscape lies like a sleeping child or a thief. (The inhabitants live underground, you know, they tunneled because of the surface radiation.) Am I not god, to move these nests from their perch?

YES YES YES. 3 saints were thrown into the burning furnace and they all screamed for me.

Allusion, illusion. The play of words like children in a sandbox as grains are thrown into the air like diamonds, imploded stars, the glint in your mother's eye that was you. A woman is symmetrical, two faces and two bobbing teats; a man has two heads, but only one face - complex mathematics, these. My mother taught me them on Sundays.

My world is simpler: every watch must have a face, every face must have two hands. I have two hands, you know. I had two faces but now I'm all alone. Am I not god, to rearrange and listen to the meaty slaps that pass as clockwork?

Call me Gabriel. I will come to you in a dark night splashed over the desert like india ink or cool dark antifreeze, blood-blooms on the guts of your car like the burned ghosts of roses. Mother had a vegetable garden, she grew me and two seed-packets of parsley in a windowbox. She was very careful, my mother, she raked me precisely and where I overspilled my borders she tucked me back. See, my hands still smell of herbs. Maybe I have never been the tightest screw in the woodwork but now I have been twisted so ineptly that I have lost the thread. I have lost the thread completely. Is it there, unraveling from your sleeve?

I think it is.

I want it.

memes, memes, all around, nobody knows when they'll all fall down

2008-05-14T21:57:52Z

(Ganked from tju_tju_tju_tju.)

Comment and I shall:

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

orders of business - of things cool and not

2008-05-14T18:25:35Z

Cool.
- The new House episode
- Radiohead concert! I didn't go, but a friend did, and she said it was awesome. (She was under the awning, but apparently many people were not. Sorry, huddled masses. But at least you were there.)
- The fact that at this very moment, I have the mascot of the DC*Rollergirls working on my drains. And I got to talk with him.

Not Cool.
- Earthquakes in China
- How 13's bisexuality is made into a cheap joke. I realize that in House, everything from race to weight to gender is mockable, but lately they seem to be distancing themselves from their Big Massive 13 Reveal Campaign by ignoring the Hutchinson's thing and making fun of her Tarzan streak. Newsflash, House writers: there is more to a person than their sexual identity. Learn it, or ~~Freedom the bisexual guinea pig~~ most of the people on my f-list will bite you.
- This. What the fuck, America? This is not Stalin's Russia.

Don't listen to what they say, kids. The really cool people DON'T VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS AND DRUG PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION. Or refuse their psychiatric meds. Or just generally fuck up as much as Homeland Security does.

fanmix: pilgrim(s) [torchwood, suzie/gwen]

2008-05-10T02:28:30Z

1. ...This has got to be the funniest thing I've seen all week.

2. Part two of the femslash-fanmixes. (Yes, I know.)

Pilgrim [Sarah Slean]
Pilgrim, where's your head at?
Are you paying the birds to sing?
But it won't work on the true path
Where the wretched are growing wings
...
Pilgrim, whatcha looking at me for?
My disaster has come and gone
It left me by the roadside
With my shadow and one more song
[Download]

Together We Will Live Forever [Clint Mansell]
[instrumental]
[Download]

Black Dirt [Sea Wolf]
As the light fades from my eyes
I smile but don't know why
...
Here on the ground I lie
I cannot hear a sound as I die
It may be true that I lied,
Broke a promise that I tried
But my heart no longer beats
and when you kill you'll only leave
black dirt under your feet
[Download]

Borrowed Time [A Fine Frenzy]
Counting stars and passing cars on the interstate
The end is near, I feel it dear, but I am not afraid
Step, step right over the line and onto borrowed time
When it's life, not waiting to die
[Download]

Headlock [Imogen Heap]
I've been walking, you've been hiding
And you look half dead half the time
Monitoring you, like machines do,
You've still got it, I'm just keeping an eye
So what, don't care, will not, the end
...
You know you're better than this
[Download]

Late Goodbye [Poets of the Fall]
Your breath, hot upon my cheek,
and we crossed, that line
You made me strong when I was feeling weak
and we crossed, that one time
Screaming stop signs, staring wild eyes,
keep on flashing, flashing by
And we keep driving into the night
It's a late goodbye, such a late goodbye
[Download]

Our Hell [Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton]
First went wrong is hard to find
We're paralyzed, we apologize
Our hell is a good life
Last went wrong,
Where's my prize under the lights
Can we call it in?
We'll be on the road - can we stop?
...
What I thought was in is missing out
What I thought it was it isn't now
There's a pattern in the system
There's a bullet in the gun
That's why I tried to save you
But it can't be done
[Download]

Use Once and Destroy [Hole]
It's the emptiness that's all you have left
Too terrified of your frozen breath
It's a bitter mouth, it's buttered and knifed
It's the awful truth you fight for your life
...
I went down to rescue you
I went all the way down
Fill your hungry wretched life
Here they come, it's closing time
[Download]

Vertigo [Sarah Slean]
The heavens dropped a bag
Of red and white lights
Pearls that keep the highway bright
And it feels like being born,
Night driving,
The moon hangs a dangerous height
...
And I am full of love and consequence
Merciful, the sky of coal,
The beauty of the cars' electric light
The speed with which their destinies glow
[Download]

Gorecki [Lamb]
All I've known
All I've done
All I've felt was leading to this
I want to stay right here
'Till the end of time, 'till the earth stops turning
Gonna love you 'till the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for
[Download]

Love And War [Rilo Kiley]
All is fair and love and we're in love
Now that everybody's dead we can finally talk
Can vanity and happiness coexist?
All the lovers we've taken in direct view of the enemy
And we shift each other's body to accept the bullet
And continue the pleasure, it's the treasures of battle
It's only for the wounded, the purple-hearted
Why must you try to ruin my peace of mind
And they were only words and I never meant them
I never loved you, even in my weakness
You were fuel for the fire cannon fodder
[Download]

Ballad Of a Bitter End [The Poems]
If this is love
It hangs in doubt
It'll kill you or me
If we come out
But what a way to go
(Talk to me again,
Please talk to me again)
[Download]

My Vampire Heart [Tom McRae]
Darling I'm lost,
Adrift in the dark
I'm clutching your words to my vampire heart,
Once more
So let in the light, turn me to dust
If it don't end in bloodshed, dear,
It's probably not love
[Download]

Rid Of Me [PJ Harvey]
Tie yourself to me
No one else
No, you're not rid of me
Hmm, you're not rid of me
Night and day I breathe
Yeah, you're not rid of me
Yeah, you're not rid of me
I'll make you lick my injuries
I'm gonna twist your head off, see
[Download]

icons: companions & such [doctor who]

2008-05-07T03:10:29Z

Dear David Tennant: Why is it so hard to icon you? I mean, Eccleson's got an excuse, with the nose, but you have none besides all your pointy bits, which even added up together don't amount to much square footage. Please stop being so difficult and submit to my photoshop skills.

Preview:

Bases by candyrack, seldomspeaking, and hex_graphics.

1	2	3

4	5	6

7	8	9

10	11	12

13	14	15

16	17	18

19	20	21

22