{ split subject }

i. calling all girlslashers: you know you have to watch Damages, right? I mean, you can trust afterellen if you don't want to take my word for it (click the "Damages" tag for more), but seriously? this is the most mind-meltingly gay series to come to summer cable in recent memory. picture The Devil Wears Prada as a serious serial drama, then substitute high-powered law firm for high-powered fashion mag, turn Meryl Streep into Glenn Close and make her character about five times as scary, and you will begin to comprehend the power of this OTP.

if that image isn't enough for you, here are ( a couple ubergay things that happened in the pilot ) it's getting good critical buzz, but honestly I wasn't overly impressed by the clunky, derivative anti-corporate thriller plot. Ted Danson is so endearing as Evil CEO that you almost want HIM to win! but OH PATTY. go ahead, DL it and see for yourself. and then join damages_fx.

ii. someone is clearly falling down on the job, because it was only by accident that I found tallulah71's new BSG vid Sunday Bloody Sunday. and yeah, I also went, "really? isn't that a bit heavy-handed?" but it turned out to be everything one could possibly want from a vid to that song. I said, in my comment, that she managed to make it simultaneously a biting political commentary and a heart-wrenching emotional juggernaut. and there are these beautiful sequences of parallel clips in it about humans and cylons, in hate and in love. (oh, and iamsab said, "it had really good 'people pointing guns at each other while trembling.' not just Lee. he's usually the trembler.") it gives me chills, man, every time.

seriously, this deserves to be part of the pantheon of Big Name BSG Vids. I'm pretty sure I've seen most of the ones that get recced right and left, but if there are any other new ones like THIS out there that I don't know about, please rectify the oversight. (no Adama/Roslin or Kara/Lee, kthnx.)

also, you should watch jarrow's Snape vid, along with everything Brad Neely ever does. TRUST ME. Professor Snake is totally my girlfriend!

iii. I got a haircut and lost half my sprout. TRAUMA. to be fair, Miguel did ask me three times if I was sure I wanted him to cut it. thing is, I DID want him to do something with it. really, I wanted for him to have some overarching artistic concept. or at least, to cut only the three inches he showed me with his fingers, and not the six inches he actually lobbed off. I won't even have enough for tiny pigtails for a week or two; luckily I have the flower clip and there's one and only one hairstyle I can do in the meantime, with the remaining spit of curls flipped up so it somewhat covers the unfortunate spikes. of the good: the back is perfectly fauxhawked, just how I want to keep it for the foreseeable future. I just don't know HOW I'll keep it this way while the top grows back out enough to work with, because I don't really feel like paying $30 a pop to maintain it (I can mohawk by myself, but not fauxhawk). this is why I started Operation Grownup Haircut 18 months in advance of interviews, I suppose. pictures not forthcoming.

iv. also, after exercising heretofore untapped reserves of willpower in the various eyewear boutiques where I shopped for sunglasses, I accidentally bought new glasses frames at Lenscrafters. I pick them up tomorrow, and I'm rather trepidatious, because can they really be the ubertrendy Frames of Ultimate Destiny that I was trying to hold out for?? but they were subtly cateyed metallic pink with (woefully logoed and undecorated) orangey plastic sides, and maybe it's enough for them to be the Frames of Opportunity, because did I really want to put new $500 lenses in year-old frames (however magenta)? pictures forthcoming (I hope).

v. (as seen on twitter) we saw Jorja Fox (again) at Brite Spot! she's such Silverlake hipster dyke and it makes me very very happy. we're not maintaining a very high volume of celebrity sightings, around here, but Jorja's always a good one.

vi. I have NOT read Book 7, nor am I planning to do so anytime soon, but I HAVE read all your Book 7 reaction posts. which means I am spoiled for *everything* that happens, hurrah! it traumatizes me (despite said fandom's current wankopalypse) that I'm apparently so utterly out of HP fandom. I mean, I still have a tag! I did see the movie! *clings*

vii. I accidentally did this:



it's accurate, I think, except I might technically be slightly stronger on the J, and I/E is pretty much a tossup.

viii. I retired a whole mess of icons, leaving me slightly shellshocked, but now I have so much space for shinies! (c.f. temporary Damages icon that I threw together; nyuszi has promised more and better). but I cannot, for the life of me, find the girlslashy Grey's icons. WTF, people?? my kingdom for a good Addison/Cally square. also, some combination of Ugly Betty's Alexis/Wilhemina/Christina (I found Betty/Amanda). and I wouldn't mind some Teen Girl Squad. SEND HELP.

ix. the Which LOLcat Are You? results page is genius. it's like a zillion times better than the quiz itself (which gave me icanhazcheezburger cat, when *clearly* I am but-I-eated-it cat).

x. lest you think I'm spending ALL my time writing long, pointless lj entries, look how I've started posting tiny bits of my dissertation @ cyborganize. go team me!

i. you too can have a Potter/Weasley 2008 bumper sticker for only $3! I'd be much obliged if those of you who are more in HP fandom than I would PIMP this around. it's a fanboy friend of my brother's who's making them, and I don't think he even intends them to be slashy, which is lolarious. that's actually the only point of this post. we're going to see teh movie tomorrow if we can get tix EEEEEEEEEE!

ii. I've been forcing the denizens of Shoemoney Haus to imbibe their RDA of viral video, as is my wont. so if you want a review of YouTube's greatest hits, according to me, here's a playlist of things we've been watching.

iii. I'm also still at imeem, twitter, plazes, librarything, flickr, various del.icio.us-es, OurChart, friendster (old skool!), majoritython, and cyborganize. you know, in case you were wondering.

iv. I slightly updated the TV shows post. currently watching Green Wing, a COMPLETELY INSANE and delightful British dramedy, and rewatching Bad Girls. and of course BIG LOVE on actual television. next up: John From Cincinnati (which ljconscript has ORDERED me to watch), Elizabeth I the mini-series, Doctor Who series 3, 30 Rock, Eureka, Veronica Mars season 3, The Office Season 3, and then maybe Carnivale if we run out of everything else (which seems unlikely).

v. kittenz are still ADDICTIVE cute! IJS.

• just for the record, I'm not buying that the underscore is the new bullet as per iamsab. I love my bullets! they are so satisfyingly round and centered. this is to say that yes, here we have yet another post full of randomness. you know you love it. (it's a bitch to tag, though.)

• and to put fannishness first -- a big wet HAPPY BIRTHDAY to sinful_caesar. I was a bad friend and didn't send her anything. what she has sent me is an appreciation for the glorious slashiness that is Wicked, the musical. truly the mind bloggles. a case in point: For Good, the final love ballad between Glinda and Elphaba (the Wicked Witch), which you may also see in moving pictures in this video, which features Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoworth rehearsing it.

I'm feeling the urge to drabble Elphaba/Dorothy (among various pending femslash100 projects) -- partially as a result of the hotness of their whole enemies dynamic in the original film, which I just saw some stills from. I worry the Gelphie fandom will hate me forever.

• also, before getting started, let me just acknowledge that the weather has been stunning. october and still gloriously sunny and in the 70's. these sorts of aberrations always feel apocalyptic to me, like the friendly face of catastrophic climate change a la The Day After Tomorrow. or, on a less epic scale, I'm anticipating getting slammed by a horror of a winter, just when we least expect it, lulled as we are into complacency by Indian summer. the weather in Amsterdam was lovely too (especially considering it was forecasted to rain all weekend), but closer to 60. just warm enough that I could sit on a bench in the Vondelpark with my laptop, revising my paper. not quite warm enough that I wanted to sit and eat outside at sidewalk cafes, though the locals seemed to be game.

( Amsterdam )

• when I wasn't at the conference or at a museum or foraging for food or reading for school, I was at the hostel catching up on LJ (free wireless is love!). I don't know why I always end up commenting in a mad obsessive spree, but apparently it works for me. so I'm nearly there* and yet again resolving not to get behind any more no sir. haha. I should really cut back, but I don't wanna. girls_today is sorely tempting me to start reading in HP again, but I shall be strong. it did, however, bring to my attention to a totally mind-blowing Umbridge/Hermione fic (yes, you read that right) by yamapea. I really do *heart* wrongness, because this is like my dream pairing. it's disturbing, explicit, and it absolutely works.

• the point being, overall, that this trip was everything I'd hoped.

• lately, I've been particularly enamored of the words evanescence, effervescence, efflorescence.

• I wrote this all very quickly and stayed up too late in order to do so. but you know, if I don't blog it that means it DIDN'T HAPPEN. ergo, more soon...

* does not include comments from March 1, 2005-June 21, 2005, which have been set aside as a project for some even more absurdly remote date.

first of all: OMG 100 ICONZ EEEEEEE!!! (I'm up to 82 -- had them all in reserve, ready to go...)

I also made a few icons

I got this nasty cold/sinus infection at my grandparents' house. managed to stay in pretty good spirits nevertheless. while sick, and in the interest of paper procrastination, I organized not only all my pictures from the Rome/Greece/Istanbul trip, but the entire backlog of photos on my computer. I rather thought this was an impossible project, so I'm quite proud of myself (in the end, the rest of pictures combined took less time than the 300 from the trip). millions of pictures!

and I finished Half Blood Prince. I think I might have skimmed some parts of it in my haste -- I don't know if I'll go back. I correctly guessed who was going to die before I started -- that was widely speculated in fandom and really not that hard to figure out. I guessed who the half blood prince is on about page 40, and I'm inordinately proud of my powers of deduction. aeonian warned me that my beloved Tonks (our fanon lesbian) would be character-assassinated through an ill-begotten romance, so having prepared myself for the worst, I was pleasantly surprised. after absorbing 2nd Song, I take a sort of triangulated bond between ( spoiler ) to be only natural, so the pairing made perfect sense and was rather adorable. didn't really follow the kerfuffle between the Harry het ships, but I LOVE Ginny more and more. but where the heck was Hermione? I imagine the Harry/Draco faction is happy. ( spoilers and a theory ) anyway, I *heart* Snape! if anybody got character-assassinated I thought it was Madam Pince, who I've had a soft spot for ever since I read a great Hermione/Pince story. and our other fanon lesbian, Madam Hooch, didn't appear at all hmmmph. the Bellatrix/Narcissa bit better make it into the movie, because I adore those two. overall, I thought characterization was brutally sacrificed to a faster-moving plot, and it was an entertaining read but not nearly as affecting as OotP.

if you posted a HBP reaction, please link me here. I can read them now!

I really could not overstate how much I'm in love with battlestar galactica. every episode just keeps getting better and better. (I haven't DLed 2x06 yet; don't spoil me please.) I adore Starbuck's ( spoilers ) guh.

meanwhile, I don't have time to read my flist during this trip. and in the last-minute beginning-of-semester crunch I doubt I'll have time to catch up. what I'm saying is: this is my first official LJ hiatus. so please link me, too, to fic you write and anything else I should know. :*

may start logging onto IM more frequently, as I figured out how to make my antisocial self invisible, so tell me your AIM, Yahoo, or MSN screen name if you want me to add you to my buddy list.

I am working on my paper. I am. slowly.

1. (I'm back! since friday. been running around and the first phonepost didn't go through -- but here I am.)

2. where no TV show has gone before ~ Salon.com on Battlestar Galactica (view an ad first to read it for free) (I am really, really trying to convince you to watch this show! -- look, the article even compares it to West Wing, which is what I've been *saying*)

3. Traditional marriage, with its long history, was upended by heterosexuals ~ by Stephanie Coontz, NYT

4. "va va va voom... endless leg and body, to this torso that was magnificent... she has this knockout body and face... " ~Kate Mulgrew on Seven of Nine (4th season DVD interviews) [hee!]

5. NY POST = BADFIC! omg, I'm sure this is making the rounds of HP comms already, but I'm not reading them these days, and since you need to sign up to read the article, I'm reposting it for you here: WORD WIZARDS, By BARBARA HOFFMAN (and various extremely nerdy teenagers) [speaking of nerdyness: I just ordered the british version of HBP from amazon.co.uk :P]

( published fanfic! (for the 3rd time, apparently )

I suppose scopophile is ready for pimpage. rather than joining a bunch of comms in order to do so, I'm wondering if I can enlist your help. if you are a member of any nerdy theory communities such as academics_anon or literary_theory, I'd be much obliged if you'd post something short and sweet like this:

scopophile is a reading group on critical theories of pornography. for more information, go here.

*

the tri-fandom drabble-a-thon jr. needs YOU (to PIMP it chez toi). you are more popular than I am.

*

vegas_afterdark is a slashy CSI rpg. it's sort of amusing, actually. but I'd be more amused if catherine and sara (or, more specifically, catherine/sara) were there. it's already been pimped on cathandsara, but nobody took the bait. so if you know anyone you can personally pester on my behalf, well...

*

I did some girlslash nominations for hp_journos (2004 Harry Potter fic/art awards). I've certainly only read a wee smattering of the bounty available in this fandom. but of the fics I've happened to stumble upon, love, memory, I think these are the best:

( hp girlslash recs )