| Three random things about television: |
[11 Nov 2009|12:12pm] |
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mood |
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 nervous |
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1) Sex and the City lists a "stunt coordinator" in its credits. Is that code for "sexpert"?
2) NCIS ( Tiny spoiler for Endgame )
3) Dirty Jobs: This is probably embarrassing, but who can tell anymore? I love Mike/Dave. They're always giving each other a bad time, but they're pals! When Barsky burned himself at the tofu factory, Mike took it upon himself to apply the burn creme to Barsky's surprisingly muscular calf with his bare hands, despite Mike's hands being all messed up from a previous dirty job. Bromance!
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| When poetry goes bad? |
[11 Nov 2009|12:03pm] |
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mood |
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*headdesk* |
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music |
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"Pretty Good Year" - Tori Amos |
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I just discovered a mold colony growing on the upper spine of my first-edition, hardcover, cloth-bound copy of Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture. Either the little buggers were enjoying it, or had decided consumption was the best way to express their displeasure.
I don't think it's as good as the rest of her work, so maybe they were agreeing.
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| Tonight's event at Lumen was, I'd say, quite a success. |
[11 Nov 2009|01:04am] |
There were almost 30 people in the audience - one of whom was, much to my delight, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) concernedlily! Camilla and Paul, the other two Flipped Eye poets I read with, were delightful. I'm convinced more and more that our editor, Nii, has the best taste around.
highlyeccentric, your postcards arrived while I was out! If you want it to count as fan-mail, I certainly won't object. It's gorgeous fan-mail, for starters, and it's going on my bulletin board.
I sold a copy of Devil's Road Down, gave one away, and traded one for a copy of Camilla's book. Also, I took along one of my two remaining copies of Mythic Delirium #20, from which I read "Journeying" as my closing. A gentleman in the audience liked it so much that I consented to sell him the magazine. Then, no fewer than two other people came up and asked to buy the magazine containing my final poem. Screw my collections and everything else; I'm going to be remembered for a single piece of work that was published in a quirky American poetry magazine. Credit where credit is due: time_shark.
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| Fic: Primatech 815 - Ch. 12 |
[10 Nov 2009|11:38am] |
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 content |
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TV - The Price is Right |
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Title: Primatech 815
Author: starrdust411
Fandom: Heroes (Crossover with Lost)
Characters: Ando, Bennet, Claire, Claude, Hiro, Isaac, Peter, Matt, Micah, Mohinder, Niki, Simone, Sylar (more to come)
Rating: R
Summary: A plane crash unites a group of strangers.
Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes or Lost.
Warnings: AU, Violence, Action/Adventure, Drug use, Het, Slash, Crossover/Fusion
Previous Chapter
Chapter 12
( In This Chapter: Peter plans on moving the survivors to the caves; Hiro reflects on the man Ando has become )
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| utahraptor used to be more against t-rex stepping on tiny women, but it keeps happening and the woma |
[10 Nov 2009|11:46am] |
|
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1591  | archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–  |  | | | ← previous | November 10th, 2009 | next | November 10th, 2009: In yesterday's comic T-Rex and Utahraptor talked about self-charging mp3 players (before everyone died) (quite a bit before everyone died). Utahraptor said "There are physical limits to what a -" before he was interrupted by T-Rex. If he'd been allowed to continue he would have said "There are physical limits to what a device such as that can do, and it wouldn't be enough, as I said earlier - assuming of course that the person lives a sedate lifestyle and barely uses their legs."
I say this because it turns out that people are ALREADY working on T-Rex's invention! In fact, they're such great people that they started working on it even before he invented it, and that's really something. Thank you everyone who sent me links to this Science Daily article and this NPR story. I even got some emails from researchers working on this very problem, which was kind of crazy, because I hadn't expected that! It made me think that if I'd written a comic about how you can converse in English with your dogs now instead, we'd all be waking up today to a world where, come Christmas 2009, a Dog Talker will be on the top of everyone's list!
Anyway that sounds pretty good to me!
UPDATE: Guys it turns out that dog translators exist, I am going to think really hard about what my third invention will be before posting it here; I don't want to waste it.
UPDATE 2: Okay the idea of using breasts as a power source was just a stray thought, I didn't mean for it to come true! I need to get a handle on controlling this new-found power. – Ryan |
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| Destiny in the stars |
[09 Nov 2009|09:07pm] |
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mood |
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 irritated |
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*slams head into wall*
Remember all the issues I had with X3 and the misogyny and lack of agency for the women and bullshit angry angry fists Skadi mad?
Yeah. It wasn't supposed to be like that.
( X2 screenwriter Michael Dougherty explains how it SHOULD have gone )
Aaaaaarg. I'm just so ... so ... arg. I'm just so frustrated. It could have been something. It could have been a movie with a powerful woman with her own motives and agency and identity. It could have meant something. I'm so frustrated!
I have decided to blame this all on Superman and his stupid movie. I will develop an irrational hatred to all things Clark Kent related. That'll learn 'im!
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| Hurray for all manner of things! |
[09 Nov 2009|05:24pm] |
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mood |
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 happy |
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music |
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i'd lie - taylor swift (don't judge) |
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Happy November, oh internet of my heart. I have many exciting things to tell you.
The first and most important is a very happy thing. On Friday I went onto twitter, where I am www.twitter.com/sarahreesbrenna, as an oppressive twitter system denies me my last, delicious 'n.' And I saw people were congratulating me.
Since I had not even managed to get dressed for the day and was indeed cocooned in a fuzzy blanket, this struck me as odd.
When someone told me that The Demon's Lexicon had been nominated for a Carnegie award, I became hopelessly entangled in my blanket and almost fell down.
The Carnegie Medal is the British equivalent of the Newbery and the National Book Award. Richard Adams won it for Watership Down. Margaret Mahy, being a writing goddess, has won it twice. It is indeed an honour to be nominated, especially in the company of such people as Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Laurie Halse Anderson, and R.J. Anderson for her awesome book Knife.
When you have a book out, you spend a lot of time trying to find out what people think. A bad internet review can make you lie down in the floor cuddling a cup of hot chocolate and murmuring 'You are my only friend, Mr Cuplington.' (All right, maybe that's just me.) So something like this just transformed my day, and made me wander around in a daze of joy all weekend.
My book. Nominated for a Carnegie. Mr Cuplington and I are so happy.
In other news, Cassandra Clare's lovely fansite Mundie Moms have been so very kind as to make Demon's Lexicon their Book of the Month. There's a forum up where people are already discussing it, and on November the 12th, 9 PM EST, there will be an online chat. I will put up the link to it in this post on the day - hope to talk to some of you then!
And a present for you all: here is the first chapter of the second book, The Demon's Covenant, which will also be up on the website very soon. I hope you enjoy!
( The Demon's Covenant, Chapter One )
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| MEME |
[08 Nov 2009|05:09pm] |
HEY
THIS IS A GREAT MEME
LINK ME TO YOURS
I WILL DO IT I SWEAR
(except if there are too many of you then maybe you'll get stick figures fjlgkdjfg)
DRAWME!
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| it turns out we were mistaken, the internet is not for porn |
[07 Nov 2009|04:34pm] |
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mood |
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 silly |
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Our intrepid pal thingswithwings found something alarming on the intertubes. An LJ community devoted to kink. The complete absence of it, that is. She was understandably shocked and titillated. Is titillated the word I want? Maybe I mean hilarified.
To each his own, right? But some of the things listed as kinks are a tad problematic; others are so unrealistic their absence creates a situation where things circle back around and become kinky again.
And so thingswithwings was hilarified at their list of rules, and I, similarly hilarified, wrote commentfic attempting to follow said rules. I tried, but unfortunately, it's still kind of kinky. I mean, partners having frank discussions about sexual needs? That's hot!
Here it is, reproduced for posterity:
( The Totally True Story of Two Men About to Have Sex: Rated NC-17 for frank, yet unerotic, discussions of sex and sexuality )
(You always know I'm writing parody when I put THE END at the end. It's the only time I get to use it!)
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| On Skincare |
[07 Nov 2009|09:44pm] |
What got me thinking about this, believe it or not, was the University of York immigration officer who went through my visa-renewal paperwork this past week. As it turns out, our applications were fine except for our photographs. When she told me that if she were to submit them with the photos we'd included, they'd be rejected.
"You're joking," I said. "Why?"
She grimaced. "You're both smiling too much. Believe me, you want to look miserable. As miserable as this lady right here on the guidance sheet!"
Apparently, the Home Office has been rejecting loads of visa renewal applications lately on the grounds that people are smiling too much in their photos, even in cases where the supposed "smile" is little more than a natural or involuntary quirk of the mouth. So, before the applications are submitted in earnest about a week from now, James and I had to go to the photo booth at the train station and get new photos taken. Ones where we're totally deadpan, neutral, and look sort of pissed off. Well, I was.
But the second thing I thought looking at the photos was, wow, I'm gray-pale right now. Sure, I may be generally lucky and not suffer frequent break-outs or spots, but damn, my skin looks dead and dull. Either that or it was the awful lighting. But I swear to you, in those old photos where I was smiling too much? My skin looked healthy. I had something resembling color. Ph.D. stress is apparently bad for the complexion.
By most people's standards, though, I've been told I'm obsessive. It bothers me if I can't wash my face both morning and night, and it's absolutely got to be with a proper facial care product that I know works well with my skin (something from LUSH or Simple is usually on hand). Beyond that, though, I don't use toner and I'm bad about remembering moisturizer. I've been astonished lately to notice some very fine lines forming on my forehead. Not something I obsess over on the basis of looks, but on the grounds of, huh, maybe I do abuse my skin a bit by skipping out on the other steps.
I've only had a few spa facials in my lifetime. In fact, I think I've only had two. The first one was really posh, back in the summer of 2001. I was visiting a friend in Texas, and she took me here. I mean, the facials we got were the expensive ones, and I have to admit, the results were astonishing. My skin looked fantastic for at least 2-3 weeks afterward. The second facial I had was very early this year in York, in the back room of the not-so-posh salon that's in the department store I was working for until February. What can I say: they were giving me a generous discount. It wasn't so much a facial as somebody else doing for me what I could easily have done at home with cleanser and an exfoliator, plus an upper-body massage. It was relaxing, but the result was not revolutionary.
I admit, I'd love to relive the experience I had in Austin. While babysitting last night, I chanced upon the most recent issue of Vogue, in which there's an article by a member of staff that they'd sent to get, I swear, about five or six different fancy facials at places around London. I admit that a few of them sound positively amazing, and actually not so unaffordable as long as one is earning money.
Would you pay £85 for 90 minutes wherein your pores actually get sucked clean by a little vaccuum thingie? It sounds kind of freakishly awesome. Plus all the other cleansing stuff they do after that, plus a massage. Oh, Ms. Immigration Officer, what have you done?
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| sure it sucks, but what about my ARTISTIC VISION??? |
[06 Nov 2009|06:58pm] |
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mood |
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 intimidated, then relieved |
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HOLD ME.
The story I was writing? I've decided that, in order for it to be better, I've got to turn it inside out, put the flashback into real time, change the tense, rewrite the beginning, and add more dialogue. *bites lip*
In my experience, dramatically overhauling a story like this is not awesome. It means I didn't know what I was doing when I started writing it. Or that halfway through I changed my mind about what the story was about. In this case, both of these things are true, and now I feel like a loser.
I could keep it the way it is and just muddle through. The benefits of this: It's the way I started writing it! And I'll damn well finish it that way! (It's way less work!)
But those aren't very good reasons and the current structure of the story has been bothering me for weeks. There's no reason it needs to be in flashback -- that's just the way I happened to write it. And it was never meant to go on for this long, but I kept adding backstory. Backstory on stuff that had only happened an hour ago. Not cool.
The story's nothing special (SO FAR), but I don't want to give up on it. It's Teyla pov! Which is new for me and also a source of frustration, but GOD, I don't wanna rip this apart and rewrite every sentence!
But it's the right thing to do.
Ed's note: Instead of taking up her mouse and striking out her flashbacks, Punk decides to go to the cake store.
TEN HOURS LATER.
I came up with an exciting new opening -- in a new, blank document (titled "kiss_horizon_reboot.txt" damn my working titles are sexy) -- and already this story is ten times more awesome.
So what we've learned from this is: When something scary needs to be done to a story, give yourself a day to think about it. I actually came up with the idea to overhaul this last night. And then, instead of taking your messy, out-of-order, wrong-tensed document and trying to work directly on top of it, start in a clean, blank window, and then slowly meld the two stories together once you're feeling more confident.
I am calm now. I just have to say that for later, when I'm freaking out again and wondering why I'm doing this to myself and if I'll ever survive.
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