{ split subject }

OK, so Elizabeth spent a lot of the movie having manpain, which is not my favorite Elizabeth, and there were some battles with Spain and stuff. honestly I couldn't see any of that very clearly because I was DAZZLED BY THE GAY.

what this movie is about, dear readers, and I swear I had no idea that I should expect this going in, is the F/M/F conduit lesbian affair to end all conduit lesbian affairs! srsly, Walter Raleigh is just a big giant dildo that Elizabeth and Bess want to use to fuck each other. I hope that's not a spoiler.

there is only one way I can cope with my almost incomprehensible levels of squee, and that is to screencap the HELL out of this baby (the wink! the bath scene! the kiss on the neck! and in the last shot THEY HAVE A BABY TOGETHER), but unfortunately I've tried about 4 different torrents and all the video files seem bogus. I'm giving up for now, but if you could point me toward a direct download I'd be much obliged. I want fic, drabbles, icons, and so on!!!

I've been a procrastinatey mess. layout for Top Secret Project is here (the BSG logo is a photoshop brush I finagled from this, if anyone wants it). I narrowly avoided starting a vid-a-day cataloguing/reviewing project at 2am the other night, beginning with important BSG gen vids (I estimate there are about 50 of these, so it's no small feat). instead I'm going to start using fanworksfinder as my behind-the-scenes vid watching diary (and in case I didn't mention: my BSG vid ideas dump). any day would be a good day to finish the really very minor revisions that are hanging over my head, because I have to write a smut draft to send to mandysbitch by friday.

from beerbad. in my defense, this didn't take very long. I used the "can I still sing the theme song?" test for some of the ones I apparently watched as a child, since often I can't remember much else about them.

* Bold all of the following TV shows of which you've seen 3 or more episodes.
* Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode.
* Asterisk if you have at least one full season on tape or DVD.
* If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

I added The Wire, Bad Girls, and SVU. I also put a ? after shows I don't think I've ever even heard of, though possibly googling might be able to jog my memory in some cases. my comprehensive list is still here.

( Read more... )

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.

i. I've fallen of the bottom of my flist a distressing number of times recently (never by more than a matter of hours). I think (hope) it's back under control for good now. but I missed some March posts, with no way of knowing which ones. *flails*

plus my web sites are down -- hopefully back up soon, hopefully with all files intact, long story. but this means my comments are bouncing at present, so if you've replied to me somewhere other than projectjulie in the past two days or so, give a holler.


ii. but there's a silver lining: mazily introduced me to the wonders of Firefox 2.0 -- particularly its ability to restore any number of tabs after quitting or crashing -- so my trademark Lost Tabs Crises, at least, are a thing of the past! I was a die-hard Safari holdout for years, but I tell you, Firefox 2.0 changed my life (_plasticity_ pointed out that lately I've been saying, "omg I just discovered something that changed my life!" on a regular basis; most of these somethings exist inside my computer). I'll never look back.

in this random screencap of a occasion when all the letters in my menus inexplicably turned upside-down, you can also see how pretty and PINK my Firefox is:


favorite extensions include del.icio.us complete (of the many del.icio.us tools, this seems to be the only one with support for multiple accounts), livejournal addons, the googlebar, and Zotero (thanks jennyo). holler if you have any tips to share, including Greasemonkey or Stylish scripts, which I haven't had much time to pick through (short of prettifying del.icio.us, which is a relief).

meanwhile, in another life-changing technological event, I've converted my public calendar to google. you can subscribe via google, iCal, or RSS. this is yet another way to keep track of me as I'm living bicoastally for the next two years.


iii. the Mary McDonnell obsession waxes and wanes in intensity, and perhaps it's better for all parties concerned if I just leave it be (in such public, publlished fora). she reported that she talked about *us* a lot in the EW interview, but nothing explicit made it through the edit; anyway, beerbad already pulled the most spectacular quote that only makes me crave Mary/Katee all the more.

meanwhile there are more pictures from our finale. and a friend asked me what my callsign is, and while I style myself more as Tory a civilian member of the presidential administration, I think the hypothetical answer is obvious [highlight: Cupcake]. want to suggest/guess?? I have decreed that _plasticity_'s callsign is Bookworm.


iv. pene and unwinding and I asked a question: Who are your single favorite TV characters of all time, male and female? female would be very difficult for me, with my excessive loves, except that there's Laura Roslin so it's obvious. and I thought male would be equally difficult for opposite reasons (I can barely even SEE boys on TV), except that there's Captain Jack (runners up = House, Richard Smith-Jones, and everyone on Arrested Development). I can totally see Captain Jack! (as I realized when I started gushing to jarrow [since it's flocked: you forgot (Captain) Jack Harkness, from Torchwood. I totally pick him! someone should start a Jackathon, seriously. and I mean that as a ficathon, but it's appropriate that it sounds so dirty... I can't imagine that you haven't *heard* about Torchwood, given the way fandom is. but in case you haven't: it's a Doctor Who spinoff run by the genius behind UK QAF, and every character is canonically bisexual. it's like the anti-BSG. I love it shamelessly. Captain Jack is totally omnisexual (he's from the future or something, my Whoverse knowledge is kinda spotty) and played by this totally gay actor who recently got gay married. you would LOVE this Jack... also he wears suspenders for no apparent reason! and is extremely talented at standing! and he's in love with Doctor Who, and keeps his severed hand in a jar (of course there is porn about this)! ...wow, I am sounding really not gay right now. the chicks rock too! they make out with aliens!]).


v. contrarily, can anyone explain SVU 8x16: On a Very Special SVU to me?!? it was as if they inserted a single episode of a serial drama from some crack-addled parallel universe into our regularly scheduled procedural! and I'm not even talking about the soapy sludge of emo that comprised the storyline -- my aversion to Olivia/Elliot aside, it just didn't make sense! the ep seemed to be referencing nonexistent events that happened before and afterward! there was no narrative closure! happyhop and I literally started the next one because we wanted to find out what happened, and lo and behold Olivia and Elliot are still inexplicably partners despite Cragen et al having just conclusively determined that this is a terrible idea! *flaily flail*


vi. oh, television. I really could talk endlessly about television (I watch it almost exclusively in bed on my iPod, these days -- I have a growing archive of seasons of stuff ripped if you want some). my catalogue (it got too long for links in the sidebar) will have to suffice for commentary. plus, randomly:

• R.I.P. Rome. not that I didn't love Atia, gratuitous toplessness, and many other things about this show, but apparently Servillia (or Servillia vs. Atia, at least) was the heart of my investment, because I couldn't bring myself to care much after she was gone.
• I watched Farscape season 1 again (mostly with my eyes closed, for which it turns out to be especially inappropriate, so I'm not sure what will become of my plan to continue until the bitter end). I'm finding Chiana much hotter this time around (no idea why). I'll NEVER get tired of the way Aeryn's leather creaks when she moves. but Zhaan is still my girl.
• the ensemble cast of child actors on Freaks & Geeks is stunningly talented. predictably, I want Lindsey/Kim slash.
• my mom (who, keep in mind, was the one who took me to Stratford every year as a child) and all her friends are watching Slings & Arrows, now! it's adorable. she forwards me emails like:

TWO YEARS in two days! ------------That's right: 2 years in 2 days: [person] and I sat down and watched the entire two year run of SLINGS AND ARROWS IN TWO DAYS! --and in the process we laughed until our sides ached (and sometimes teared up too). What a wonderful gift you gave us in the form of that recommendation. STOP RIGHT NOW AND PUSH THE FORWARD BUTTON, so that Julie will not only be witness to this note of thanks and praise, but will think to put us on our 'NOT TO BE MISSED LIST" of similar rare but wonderful entertainments.


vii. giantessmess is interviewing me for an article:

( gold star girlslasher )


viii. Photo Booth is dangerous for narcissists (like me).

( four pictures of me )

ix. I talk about Camp MCM all the time (our basement office, pictured above). but the the deliriously wacky collegiality that's spatialized there is just hard to describe. a video is worth a thousand words. late one night, poojapooja had an OCD moment and spontaneously decided to clean up my haircut using _plasticity_'s swiss army knife, and this activity was so patently absurd that we had to fire up the webcam:



this is, srsly, the worst YouTube video ever posted. except for how it's AWESOME. all evidence to the contrary, my own YT account is still quasi-professional, so I tricked poojapooja into posting it chez elle because it's just too incriminating in its utter banality (otherwise it would have ended up private, and that's no fun). also there were about four more minutes where we invented a new hairstyle and cackled a lot, but I accidentally erased the second file, so the world will never know the full extent of our genius.


x. exhibited here in some small measure is our favorite pastime: thinking up utterly frivolous theoretical rubrics. _plasticity_ came up with the concept of a "personal economy" -- basically the single currency through which all the input/output of one's life can be translated. we entertain ourselves by trying to figure them out for everyone we know. his is books. poojapooja's is treats. mine is girls(lash).

guide to ratings
:) :) :) = you haven't lived until you've seen this show [highly recommended]
:) :) = crack worth smoking [recommended]
:) = I'm only in it for the hot girls
:( = better than stabbing yourself in the eye
:( :( = utterly without redeeming social value
:( :( :( = makes me WISH I could stab myself in the eye

XD = better than snuggling a basket of baby bunnies while your personal army of robots feeds you cupcakes with buttercream frosting and sprinkles (which is to say, I am entirely unable to be objective -- not that this list makes much pretense to objectivity anyway)
▼ = get your lesbians here!

( Read more... )

last updated: 03 July 2009

I'm woefully behind on lj again, for no good reason. and I've been keeping this list of things I'd like to post about, if I were ever to have time to post, which I don't for the foreseeable future (blah blah insanity-until-mid-march-cakes, see cyborganize and tvhere for updates). so I might as well do one of those entries where I make a list of the things I'll tell you more about at some later date (or not):

i. speaking of behindness, of necessity I've been bookmarking a whole bunch of your fic for a rainy day, including everything yuletide (nor have I gotten to much of anything on the previous list *facepalm*). my apologies!

ii. I feel a bit like the apocryphal lesbian with the U-Haul, that is, all this talk with iamsab of weddings and babies (the things that clyde_man, for the record, has never wanted with anyone, least of all me) is perhaps ridiculously premature. but the thing is, it works in surprising ways (surprisingly rich and quotidian ways). and I don't believe that comes along very often in a lifetime.

iii. you should join this thing that wearemany discovered. it's totally addictive! you can update it from the site or by IM or txt (though I'm having trouble setting that up) or software with a little blurb about what you're doing. and there are multiple ways to track people, too, that I'm still figuring out (there's some sort of RSS feed of me, for example eta: twitter_pjulie -- and there'll be another one that includes me plus all my friends, I think, WHEN I HAVE THEM) -- don't you want to keep track of me?? and it's far less big brother-ish than plazes, though I'm also still addicted to that. also, I went ahead and joined OurChart. *eyeroll*

iv. shananaomi made girls gay for us as requested! your votes were taken into account.

v. I spontaneously switched from Eudora to Mail without quite realizing what was happening. I mean, I like Mail, but Eudora and I have been together for over 10 years! but there was the import mailboxes button, and *bloop* I'm joining the 21st century.

vi. my best and only LA celebrity sighting this trip was Ethan Phillips -- aka Neelix on Voyager! actually em did the spotting with her special kung fu, since it's a challenge to recognize him without the elaborate makeup. he sat down next to us at Cafe 101 on my first and samdonne's last morning. BUT MEANWHILE EM SAW GRACE PARK! she stood in line behind her at Starbucks; tragically, I was not with her at the time.

vii. I have "crazy BSG dreams" on my list, but the dreams were ages ago and now I've totally forgotten them! eta: and then LAST night I dreamed and dreamed about hanging out with Mary McDonnell. it was sort of wonderful and sort of torturous.

viii. I've been contemplating writing up an eloquent position statement on the flailing over how Kara's recent "tomcatting around" is out of character and/or bad and wrong, neither of which I believe is true. but that's fatally low on the list of priorities. so all you get is this snip from an email to mandysbitch: a) I DON'T think Kara is a bad person. I think she's being true to the parameters of her relationship -- Anders makes clear that he knows about this arrangement and accepts it. I have a VERY hard time blaming folks for being in love with two people [see further: my strange lack of h8 for McDreamy]. the way she's handling it may seem like a rationalization, but it's one that works for her and her partner, and I don't think Lee's proposal that they both leave their spouses is any more objectively moral (in fact, Lee is perhaps a BIGGER dick, as he seems to have NO concern for Dee's feelings). b) well, many would say this IS out of character for Kara, and offer various evidence from her earlier dalliances (basically that Gaius is the only random hookup she had, and even then she was thinking of Lee, and she has been anything but callous with others' affections and her own). OK fine, but I STILL think there's some underlying sexist disapproval of the promiscuous woman going on here. although Kara hasn't had many onscreen hookups, her promiscuity was always implied, and that's always been one of my FAVORITE things about her character. (plus somebody made Brokeback Galactica [Lee/Anders], which is totally FTW!)

ix. we were watching Big Love as a family in Ptown, joking about clyde_man and hir three wives (only s/he swapped pixieslap for me in boston, so we were never all there simultaneously). I'm the 2nd, but I don't think I'm much like nikki. lucky is totally barb, except for how clyde has to be bill+barb, what with being the breadwinner plus the one who does all the cooking and scheduling. it was really quite adorable. then we mapped it out for Shoemoney Haus too! in that version, I'm very much margene, which makes perfect sense.

x. have I mentioned that I love television? everything (see the list in my sidebar) is starting up again, yay. plus I have this ambitious list of things to learn, which goes something like:

The Book Group (UK)
Elizabeth I (miniseries, Helen Mirren)
Bleak House (miniseries, Gillian Anderson)
Yin Yang Yo (Disney cartoon that steph's in)
Freaks and Geeks
30 Rock
Veronica Mars seasons 2+3
At the Hotel (miniseries, Canada)
Kink (documentary, Canda)
The Office (US), with clyde_man

I'm still not sure where to find the canadian ones, so holler if you can help. also, I need Passion Fish and everything else with Mary McDonnell, pretty please. youtube has a whole bunch of clips of her on ER!

I'm back in Providence as of JUST NOW, if that wasn't apparent...

scattergories answers have been unscreened. normally one point would be awarded for each correct answer that isn't duplicated by someone else, but that system is dependent on time limits and questions that have correct answers. so instead, I'll be awarding a point for the BEST answer to each question (judged by an extensive and statistically accurate poll of MY BRAIN).

1. stupid things that Americans do :: "liberate" other countries (wearemany) [though I do have to declare iamsab the runner-up for Stop Same-Sex Marriage]
2. girls on TV who are gay in my mind :: necessarily a tie between Starbuck (iamsab) and Laura Roslin (blacksquirrel)
3. things you can cook without using a stove :: Jello! (museumfreak) [Jello does require the boiling of water, but I suppose you CAN do that without a stove. runner-up goes to cosmic for Delivered food! -- certainly the most appealing to non-stove-using people such as myself, but disqualified because technically you don't cook it. in a creepy coincidence, wearemany and blacksquirrel both answered Lemonade]
4. goofy names for nail polish colors :: Stubbornly Sunsettish (iamsab) [this was not the high-concept question, cosmic ;)]
5. conspiracies perpetrated by The Man against Black people :: Low income housing (blacksquirrel)
6. items on the gay agenda :: OK, this one is headed for at least a three-way tie, so you're just going to have to go read them all! it's quite an impressive agenda, IJS.
7. things you can buy at Home Depot :: lawn ornaments (wearemany)
8. lesbians :: Julie! (museumfreak) [OK, it was virtually impossible to beat that one]
9. sex toys :: E-vibes! (for the cyborg in all of us) (infloresence)
10. high-concept Halloween costumes :: Joni Mitchell's album Blue (museumfreak) [but they were all great, so this is mostly because she actually executed said costume!]

and the winner is... museumfreak! *ticker-tape parade*

an outtake: one of happyhop's categories during the RL game was "the worst pets in the world," which elicited the following answers:

martians (me)
midgets (mandysbitch)
maggots (Jess)
and... minotaurs (happyhop)

I was laughing so hard that I literally ROFLOLed. painful hilarity!

*

of course, I couldn't resist whipping out the smartphone once or twice while we were touristing in DC.



( as seen on the West Wing! (National Cathedral picspam) )

p.s. holy guh, THIS is why you should watch Rome. hot femmes fatales pitted against each other in a matriarchal deathmatch! (and a reminder: in S.1 there was a crossgen lesbian affair -- we're talking onscreen here, not the specially-wired TV in my brain)

i. upon watching the first ep, _plasticity_ and I concurred that Heroes is atrocious. why the hell do you all like it? nothing happened the entire time (which is impressive in a pilot), the few things that did happen were either completely predictable or nonsensical, the rhetoric around the mystery was comically moronic (natural selection, SRSLY?!?), it was offensively orientalist, and overall had no coherence. the only redeeming feature was Hiro (ha! pun!), who we totally hearted. (and our opinion didn't improve much upon watching the second ep -- they did start to link the storylines slightly, but it so feels like a copycat Lost, but with less finesse. and they *really* need to decide whether the superpowers evolved naturally or were the result of some experiment. we're willing to stick it out a little longer because -- superheros! -- but dear lord.)

ii. also we watched Global Frequency (this was "research" for my syllabus. mostly what I have to say about this is that MICHELLE FORBES WAS RIDICULOUSLY HOT. she pretty much broke my brain -- I'm telling you, it was like Admiral Cain + Trinity-style outfits and ass-kicking. plus, she has a girl friday! -- I now feel that it is my duty to humanity to write (or, more realistically, force someone else to write) Miranda Zero/Aleph slash (also I want an icon). however, we diagnosed the other problems with the pilot, which was far from perfect. a) if you're setting this up as an apocalyptic-crisis-of-the-week show, and the best you can come up with is exploding cold war brain, you're in trouble. it might work better as a serial, following a single potential apocalypse over a season (not that the writers could pull that off, if they couldn't pull off one ep). b) this show wants to be noirish. they have that in spades with Miranda Zero, and with the cinematography/mise-en-scene which were lovely, but they totally dropped the ball on the main secret agents. clearly they'd need to be tortured by the dark secret and enormous responsibility that rests on their shoulders. instead we get physicist barbie -- her problem was miscasting (we all know the character type -- driven, romantically/socially repressed female brainiac/career woman [Scully, Bones] -- and that girl totally wasn't pulling it off). bitter ex-cop's problem was more the writing -- they needed to at least hint at his secret man-pain (like Batman, whose superpower, we decided, is white heterosexual male privilege, ha!), heck, he could have been boozing or whoring or otherwise misbehaving when we first met him -- instead they gave us nothing to make the character interesting. those two just didn't gel with the dark mood of the rest of the show. I don't know if these flaws are what killed it -- possibly I'm overthinking, and it was just too sci-fi for the WB (also true). but anyway, I'm seeding it for a while, so holler if you want the seed file. meanwhile, I'm moving the meta post about another unaired pilot, Nobody's Watching, over to cyborganize (shortly). but to summarize: WATCH IT. and then google it.

iii. Jericho is silly. I'm quitting.

iv. I know none of you care anymore, but new!Olivia is absurdly hot. hot like Olivia used to be hot (though with longer hair). of course, without Olivia (or Alex) around that's not much fun. but I'm actually looking forward to watching SVU for the first time in years

v. only having one ep of Grey's to watch at a time is pretty much torture.

vi. Spencer and Ashley are so adorable that I want to die. plus, I watched the 2-part premiere streaming on the-n.com, without ads! who does that?? I keep forgetting to remind people about TV on the internet, but seriously, you can get a lot of shows for free as of this fall, legally.

vii. dear Studio 60 -- if you are going to insist on showing so much alleged comedy, you should really consider integrating it better with the character storylines. Jordan comes over to tell them to lampoon her, Gina complains that her skit isn't funny, and then there is no last minute skit where Gina plays Jordan (with the added bonus of girlslashiness in a doppelcesty fashion)?!?!? maybe you're saving that for next week when the embarrassing kiss-and-tell memoir comes out -- but if not, I will have lost all respect for you (no matter how much you openly poke fun at your own homoeroticism).

viii. no, I have not watched the Lost premiere yet.

ix. I have a new plan for my ipod, which is to use it to watch TV in bed (since it's not like I ever take it anywhere)! this will preclude me taking my laptop to bed, which is a filthy, filthy habit. plus I will actually get to watch my designated ipod shows (currently Deadwood and House S.2 [again], soon to be NCIS S.2).

x. the only time I ever used to read (in my adult life) was during commutes on the subway (now that I live in providence, I don't read at all unless I'm forced to). when I do take the video ipod somewhere, I can watch TV on public transit -- I'll NEVER read again!!! and there are all these books waiting on the shelf, too -- the rest of Snow Crash, more William Gibson, the one giantessmess gave me, the one mandysbitch gave me, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Julie, Princess Diaries: Elizabeth I, Star Trek: Dark Passions, Djuna Barnes, etc. but mmmmmmmmm, TV.

I'm working my bootylicious ass off again. determined to draft the syllabus by tuesday. I felt I could take some sort of break after I did the second pass through the field lists, but frankly it wasn't very satisfying. I didn't manage to write a drabble, finish the massive me meme post (in the works since January), or clean up my house. I'm not sure *what* I did last week, frankly, except poke at lj and deal with computer problems (I think I'm going to wipe the drive someday soon and start over). while spending all my free time at the (metaphorical and/or literal) library may not be exactly fun-filled, it does bring with it the underlying happiness of steady productivity. so I'm giving myself over to it, as I need to this semester. plus, my BFF _plasticity_ is the best study buddy ever. we've resolved to go as the Dialectic for Halloween -- and we don't even have to dress up special!

and meanwhile, there's always TV. I should say something about Studio 60. whatever its flaws or merits, the bottom line is that it doesn't have a girlfriend for me. Harriet and Gina have subtext, but I don't find either of them particularly attractive. Jordan is a real waste -- they could have had Miranda (the younger version), and instead they picked Andrea. just completely bland and sweet and not at all the ball-busting network exec. and they can't even redeem her by making her gay, because then they'd get all the flack about how it's such a stereotype that a powerful woman must be a lesbian. I like the minor characters best, but who knows when they'll get more than two lines. it's an entertaining show -- though I agree with the tangleofthorns/mazily hive mind that Sorkin's earnest idealism is less appealing when applied to comedy rather than politics (we're suppose to buy Jordan's PR BS that they're going to be making "quality" TV now?). but I love that it's about TV -- I'm a complete sucker for self-reflexivity. the set is delightfully wacky, and it was all worth it just for Felicity's cameo as herself. but without a CJ, it's not a candidate for obsession.

tragically, Desperate Housewives still sucks. and the suckitude is more egregious considering that they're just recycling all the scenarios that sucked in season 2. ( spoilers under here, and also a TV LIST OF DOOM )

SNAKES ON CRACK!!!

also

muthafuckin snake, get off my dick! [nipple/tongue/ass/eyeball/neck]

also

SPORKS ON A PLANE!!!

yes, it was snakes in a movie theater with heathers and lonejaguar!! I wanted to make them write girlslash on a plane with me, on principle (orgasms are a good way to relieve stress/grief, and all), but it doesn't look like that's actually going to happen. we're being lazy!

in honor of the greatest movie ever made, I bring you snakes in a fake TV religion:

And unto the leader, they gave a vision of serpents, numbering two and ten, as a sign of things to come.
~ The Book of Pythia

which is to say that winging its way to me through the mail is my shiny new black macbook, named Pythia after the head priestess of Delphi and voice of the oracle, along with my video ipod Ros (short for Laura Roslin), which is inscribed "there are many copies" (heeeeee, she's a cylon!) along with my email addy and phone number. HURRAH! stay tuned for a post hawking a 3-year-old 12" powerbook 867MHz. plus along with the ipod rebate there's a printer rebate, so I went ahead and ordered a new printer/scanner/copier, which means I can scan things! I'm taking requests.

I am devoted to my grandparents, but this is one of the most difficult places to be. I've sussed out some open wireless next door, halleluia, so I'm carting my laptop over to the corner of the yard in shifts to huddle in a plastic chair with the mosquitos until my battery dies (I get maybe one hour -- old computer). that's my lifeblood, in the air -- it was mildly terrifying when I couldn't get the dial-up working.

oh, my grandparents. they're barely coping. nana had a fall this morning, and really it wasn't much of a problem to get her upright and back into the wheelchair, but she completely panicked and froze and cried for an hour afterwards about how she wishes she'd died when she had the stroke. and on her good days, she says "I'm determined to beat this" -- it's permanent brain damage, she's never going to have greater mobility. she can walk, painstakingly, and she walked all around the yard again afterwards. but she can't walk in public because she gets embarrassed and flustered. she should be seeing a therapist, but that's never going to happen, and she categorically refuses to take her anti-depressants. papa is too frail to help much, and mostly refuses to see doctors. so they rent a car every other weekend to go to the grocery store and the casino and otherwise don't leave the house. I mean, I can't even begin to describe their level of crazy. hard, but they have two sons in-state to manage them and it's not my job.

plus I talked to my dad. I'm going to eta the dad post when I'm reunited with the internets.

today (the above was written last night, now) Aunt Winnie gave me $20 and I doubled it, pretty much due to one hit on the Fairy Fortune machine where I mistakenly played 25 cents per credit instead of a penny (one pull is 20 credits), and I hit for 100 credits. lucky.

I watched some TV by accident. I feel bad being on the computer ALL day (writing my HAIRGATE piece) and there's only so long I can talk to them -- TV is at least marginally interactive, and I didn't download enough to get us through the week. so I watched Dead Like Me for the first time, and yet again michellek wins at the mediasphere because she knew all along. the women on this show are so delightful, quirky and rich and unexpectedly beautiful. George/Betty could be an OTP, though with all this BARW stuff I feel guilty that I picked out the two white girls. and now I'm apparently watching Eureka again, against my better judgement. JO BE MY GIRLFRIEND! she's ridiculously gorgeous, for serious -- way hotter with a uniform and a gun than as a femme babymama/lesbian vampire -- and I may really have to write that Jo/Maya doppelcest bunny someday (I need more fanfic projects like a hole in the head). or Jo/Zoe could be my OTP, hahaha, because I'm a perv like that. anyway, this will only make sense to thrace_.

so we said goodbye to Ptown...

( ferry boat pix )

OK, so I'm currently working on a short piece to submit to Camera Obscura's Diva issue on HAIRGATE: the way lesbian panics about powerful female characters are displaced onto and managed through obsessing about their hairdos. Currently collecting links about Janeway, Olivia, and Starbuck.

a) do you have any links for me -- particularly fan discussion and news items?
b) can you think of any other female characters who have fallen prey to hair controversies?

TIA. this is fun!

also, you know you want to sitcomathon...

it's at least 95 degrees outside, breaking 90 inside my apartment, and I've fled to *bucks for some iced tea and AC. unfortunately, given that these are my only five days in providence out of three months, most of the puttering I have to do involves being in the house. the heat is supposed to break in a matter of hours, anyway, so there's always tomorrow (you're only a day away!).

I'm embroiled in an internal debate about whether, in the long run of the short term, I want to live in providence or move to Boston. Boston has the advantage of being a real city, one which is certainly growing on me, and when I'm away I never quite believe that I actually like it in providence. it took me three years to get here, but I do. last night I did dinner and a movie (A Scanner Darkly 80 [that's a smiley]) with kore, slowmend, laliu, and J + friend; tonight is dinner and TV (Eureka, that new sci-fi show?) with _mesk and maybe Gill and whoever else turns up. I'll also see more of objet_petit_a who I caught up with on monday, and ljconscript and one or two other friends who are in town -- the rest are off to parts unknown, or at least haven't emailed me back. my other half, _plasticity_, is still at theory camp. *weeps*

but I digress -- mainly, this is a double fandom post! *waves to femslash_today*

I've made no secret of my crazed obsession with doppelcestuous girlslash. well thanks to iamsab, this genre now has a THEME SONG.

Nellie McKay - Clonie [right-click save-as]

( lyrics )

may this inspire you to hitherto unknown heights of doppelcest inspiration, my friends. (and oh, the fanvids that could be made!)

secondarily, OMG SUGAR RUSH! compared to South of Nowhere (the US teen lesbian drama with a virtually identical cast of characters), the first season was entertaining but didn't do that much for me. yes, the British show was grittier, and had better writing, acting, and editing, but it tended toward the farcical, and Sugar was so reprehensible that I couldn't get emotionally invested in the romance. well, they have rectified all of this, launching the second season (now 6 eps in) with a totally reconfigured and far more satisfying structure. and more sex!

( here there be spoilers )

so yeah, I'm rather beside myself with love for this show. many more caps from the third ep are here. meanwhile, I'm watching House S.1 (and a bit of Conviction, but it's truly atrocious), to be followed by Nip/Tuck S.1 with clyde_man. and J asked how I was surviving with TV on summer hiatus -- ha!

(I purged about 20 icons -- I'm not quite sure how I managed it -- uploaded some new ones but I still have ROOM omg!)

eta: OMG OMG again! _mesk just showed me this AMAZING Roslin vid by beccatoria that I missed somehow. I am dying of squee! I'll be the first to admit that I'm not particularly vid-enabled, but I have been watching and enjoying a number of BSG vids. see my YouTube faves (or holler if you want other stuff). while I'm here I should also re-rec my favorite vid of all time, Every You Every Me (Starbuck/Roslin) by tallulah71.

eta2: OK, Eureka is atrocious -- it's no wonder the non-initiated have trouble believing that BSG is actually a good show. however, it does have Maya (Erica Cerra) as an absurdly hot ass-kicking sheriff with giant guns (eta: thrace_ brings us screencaps!) -- um, yes, I do have a type. I'm writing Deputy Jo/Maya doppelcest in my head -- but I shall try to restrain myself as I'm already many drabbles and fics behind.

the BSG preview was intriguing (lots of babies! not enough Roslin). I'm actually concerned about what will become of me if S.3 is as compelling as S.2.

sunday night furies and quasiradiant lured me away from my computer with promises of soul food and kissing. we missed aeonian! I wasn't planning to leave the house, but you know, they called. let this be a lesson to all of you. there were mobs of happy happy gay people filling the streets (almost none of whom were white, wow!), and we discussed the msscribe affair and why I'm afraid of lesbian bars.

and also last week I went to see Allison Bechdel with the formidable kellychambliss, hurrah!

I love fandom people. (eta: it has just occurred to me that the intensity of my fascination may be due to the dynamics of microcelebrification in fandom -- I mean, these are girls whose work I idolize.) wearemany theorizes that fannishness is not so much a sexual orientation as a sexual subculture -- which explains a lot about its robust overlap with the leather scene.

my life is a tangle, right now. I'm not sure how to be all the places I want to be and see all the people I want to see and still get my PhD. it's a bit dire, actually -- or, not to catastrophize, I could call it a thorny transition. I'm going to TES Fest (or some part of it? I haven't figured out the details yet) with FG this weekend, if anyone cares to join me.

I spent last weekend on a massive redesign of my academic site and my personal site -- probably 20, 30 hours of work (debugging). this in preparation to make my field lists and mirror them online, not just as more procrastination. still some technical difficulties that I can't figure out how to fix, and infinite tinkering that I *could* do, but I've got them to a mostly-functional state where I can stop for the time being, praise be. if you're the sort who knows about servers and php, you can read my comments about the remaining issues in the top posts here -- I can't get the "page not found" front page to go away and I can't get projectjulie.net to run correctly, both of which I believe to be due to problems with the multisite hack that I'm using (trying to run several drupal sites off a single installation). I can't get the supposedly more elegant symlink method to work at all. in fact, I don't really understand any of this stuff, but somehow I manage to more or less muddle through. and shit, I just realized that my projectjulie.net email address is bouncing because of my domain-forwarding workaround, and I'm not sure what to do about that (huh, maybe I can change it so the forwarding is on the side of my host rather than godaddy) (did it clumsily using an html redirect, but it will serve). email me @ brown, for now.

I'm "almost" caught up on eljay, which I suppose is about as caught up as I'll ever be. it feels SO GOOD to be able to top off my flist in an hour after I wake up. and meanwhile, TV keeps me sane. current is the end of Lost S.2 and Conviction up until the appearance of teh boobs -- and I've finished the seasons of Desperate Housewives (a crushing disappointment, which makes me want to watch S.1 again so I can remember why I loved this show, because right now I honestly couldn't tell you), SVU (don't ask), House (House/Cameron robot sex!), Big Love (which was very hard to watch without iamsab! they were SO GAY, and they got GRASS!), The L Word (obviously), BSG (really obviously), and clyde and I have two eps left of West Wing (RIP) -- what am I forgetting? and then there are the things that are starting (Sugar Rush!) or that might start soon (Rome? Weeds? South of Nowhere? Nip/Tuck?). and on the list is NCIS (inherited from iamsab), House S.1, Bad Girls S.3, earlier Nip/Tuck, maybe even Grey's. so these are the things we can talk about.

the game Table Topics wants to know:

which TV show would you pick to live inside for a week?

i. the brain trust Quorum of Five made various advances in human knowledge at the Great Toaster Meetup 2006 (c.f. previous post). we have divined, for example, that the cylon god is a Starbuck/Roslin shipper (obviously, since those two are his chosen ones), and that, from the Jewish perspective, Jesus is totally a Mary Sue.

I become increasingly convinced that fannishness is akin to a sexual orientation, at least in terms of its powerful experience of subcultural community.

ii. I get emails like this from my friends: "I'm trying to find incestuous lesbian fan fiction/slash stuff on Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory (from Gilmore Girls) for a paper I'm writing" -- so who can help?? thenewhope said she might have some leads...

iii. something I love: Sugar Rush -- basically South of Nowhere, but British and thus raunchier and grittier and with better acting, editing, and cinematography, and more black comedy than earnestness. but lacking, I hate to say, the narrative pleasure of an unfolding, angst-ridden OTP, since Sugar is a completely irredeemable bitch who Kim clearly has no hope of a meaningful relationship with. something I H8: automatic-flushing public toilets! I have been brewing a rant about this for so long. I don't know if it's the particular choreography of my bathroom habits or what, but they NEVER flush when I stand up, so I have to do it manually, and then invariably they finally flush again just as I'm leaving. also they tend to flush right when I sit down.

iv. friday's discussion consisted of the following theorywank:

• the Nike slogan "Just Do It" (alternately "I dunk, therefore I am") is the quintessential postmodern reconfiguration of the cogito ("I think, therefore I am"), with its emphasis on identity as performative and its refusal of any unified, interior subjectivity.

• debate about how my rubric for understanding my department, Team Modernism vs. Team Postmodernism, would map onto Ninjas vs. Pirates. I was arguing for Pirates = Modern and Ninjas = Pomo, because Pirates = colonialism, state apparatus, and the quest for material goods while Ninjas = globalization, information (spy practice), and stealth terror (one of my classmates helpfully added that Zombies = Realism). except that this site emphasizes Ninjas as highly trained, mass-produced, state-sponsored conformists who follow orders blindly, and Pirates as highly individualized, modular camp performers who have no moral code and care about "profit and profit only." which suggests that I have them reversed, or more plausibly that the whole Ninjas vs. Pirates nexus is so hopelessly postmodern that it can't be parsed in this way.

clearly grad school has permanently ruined me for polite society.

v. let's all read Roe v. Wade. I read it as research for my story, which is the sort of thing one does when writing fic about the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. but in this day and age it should be part of our basic political literacy, right? I had no idea how particular and provisional it was. there's a more detailed post brewing for cyborganize outlining my discomfort with the discourse of "privacy" -- you can see here how easily "liberty" (the Fourteenth Amendment) is transposed to something subtly different. the fact that the "right to privacy" is a cornerstone of the protection of civil liberties (c.f. Lawrence v. Texas, the decision striking down sodomy laws) doesn't make the route it uses to get there any less troubling to me.

i. FINISHED GRADING THE FRAKKING PAPERS. so this is your traditional post-grading reward post. had them for three weeks (since before spring break) and still it was a mad crunch at the end. tuesday = "I have all afternoon, I shall grade 4 papers today!" *grades one paper* *gets distracted by looking at faceon's gorgeous custom layouts for an hour* *goes to class* *grades half a paper* *watches 2 episodes of House* *goes to sleep* yesterday = "well, there's still some hope that I could finish by thursday?" *goes to Boston to present for Harvard Femsex* *decides all-nighters are totally overrated* *goes to sleep* today = "OK I'll just read them real quick and write three sentences and a grade!" *spills coffee on skirt in South Station due to wobbly table* *amidst the chaos of cleaning up coffee spill, gets on MBTA train without backpack containing wallet, graded papers, and everything else* *gets off train at Back Bay and sweet talks nice T man into letting me get on for free* *finds backpack still sitting by the table in South Station 20 minutes later* *grades last two papers during the prof's lecture! which means I missed learning all about Arnold Schwartzengovernor* -- what is my problem and why do I spend 2 hours at least on each paper?? [/rhetorical question] anyway, it was a bit hairy there at the end, and I earned mild chastisement by LJ (said prof, aka ljconscript) which was probably deserved, but I correctly guessed which two students would be absent (among others -- the weather is glorious) and went over theirs more carefully this afternoon, and the long and the short of it is I'm DONE and was in pretty good spirits through the whole thing. so now (interpreted loosely) I have to read Jameson for seminar tomorrow, and after that I get to CATCH UP ON LJ (~ two weeks behind AGAIN), and write things like wingswing (which could probably use secondary betas so holler if you want a preview) and an abstract for a book chapter (the Olivia paper version 2.0! a summer project) and a presentation for Open Source Culture about fandom and a drabble wherein Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes dump their asshats and shack up together to raise their babies (which I have decided is necessary for my pop cultural sanity). yes. and maybe at some point I will FINALLY get around to reading femslash06! apparently I HAVE managed to step down my level of BSG obsessiveness as planned post-conference, evidenced by the fact that I haven't been posting at livewireless (RIP ridiculous addiction) and also occasionally think about other things (although not Jameson, apparently).

ii. with the way the past few weeks have been, I have all this TV backed up. evidently I'm addicted to House (thanks to iamsab) even in the TRAGIC absence of Stacey (oh the narrative pleasure of episodic TV!), because (as noted above) I watched that first (so I should DL S.1 at some point, I suppose). but there's still weeks of Desperate Housewives (which is on as we speak -- Lynette has a new girlfriend! co-worker! Bree has a new manvil! gosh, the EIGHT SECONDS of S.2 when they were slashy sure were nice... eta: awwwwwww OK, that was cute! angsty and then CUTE! and Bree clearly NEEDS SEX). and SVU and Conviction, which are mostly a chore at this point, frankly. and the concluding arc of West Wing! which I'm also unmotivated to watch because after I do there's no more ever, and anyway they've done a good job of facilitating my deinvestment (not like when Voyager ended! but not as bad as SVU, so there's that) -- although I actually enjoyed the past 3 seasons unlike everyone else, so there (it's just that the election is Depressing with a capital D for Heterosexuals Democrats Suck!). what's the "lesbian cheerleader" ep of Veronica Mars? I thought it was 2x15 but no, although that did make me mildly interested in committing retroactively to S.2. oh, and Sugar Rush and S.3 of Bad Girls! speaking of which, I'm still trying to find time to make good uploads, and meanwhile I've got the S.1 extras from the UK DVDs copied from giantessmess's friend. for the life of me I cannot get the Helen and Nikki interview to decrypt! I think it must be corrupted -- does anybody have the booty?? (I've got the Julies and Sylvia interview, the book signing, the Oxford prison segment, the promo, and the outtakes -- that's all the rest, right? but I'd re-rip all of them again if I could because I got a report that the frame rate was off or something, so I may try to learn a better way.)

iii. and now, thank goodness, we move on to the "friends" section of this post. my geeky friend bjorn, who I was visiting last weekend, has kindly informed me that there is a simple software hack to give ibooks dual display support. glory be! this has vast implications for my very identity -- namely, I now plan to leave behind ~8 years as a powerbook user and buy an intel ibook when they come out (in the fall?). because dual display support is really the only powerbook feature relevant to me, and apparently the ibook release is planned sooner than the mythical 12" macbooks. and my first-generation 12" powerbook is getting old and slow. probably I will buy a black or otherwise non-white one in order to be *different*, if that rumor proves to be true, although black is really not my color and I wish they'd make pink! but that is apparently not the way of hip tech design in the '00s. and I will also buy a new external hard drive and a Treo! so I'd better start saving my slush fund...

vi. Dear lj -- for the purposes, as I understand it, of her dissertation in philosophy, my other geeky friend cathy wants to know: What are some good examples of short stories and/or novels in which the author refers to himself, or to the characters *as* characters, or to the story itself?

v. thank you giantessmess for the book xoxoxo!! I haven't actually seen it but clyde reported from the field. I'm looking forward to putting it on my summer lineup of YA lit! Trickster's Queen (Tamora Pierce) is by my bed right now, and it's so good...

oh p.s. many somebodies already did the wikipedia birthday meme for me, so I'm off the hook...

OMG I WROTE 5 SOLID PAGES TODAY! which is quite the accomplishment considering that I've been saying "I must write 5 pages" every day thus far but my previous record was 3. there is hope that I will finish in TWO MORE DAYS! 10 pages to go, give or take -- and all planned out in my head (Derrida, Ernst, webcam archives, wrapping it all up with public/private spheres) in that reassuring way that the final thirds of papers are. I'm not coherent enough to explain all the ways in which this would be miraculous -- trust me, I'm going "brain, who are you and what did you do with my dysfunctional, self-destrcutive psyche?!?"

I'm exhausted and brain-fried and as soon as I finish typing this I'm going to sleeeeeep. but first I want to say:

1. I'm fortified by the daily updates from those of you who are who are also being tortured by hard at work on school crap. solidarity, yo! even though I'm not updating myself or really commenting because I'm all FOCUSED liek whoa. but I hope that you're all still alive and all.

2. could South of Nowhere be any more with the CRACK and the PORN?! last week they were frolicking in bikinis and this week of course they had to be hopping around in their undies trying on outfits. it is PURE PORN GENIUS! and, like, holy OT3some Batman -- I was all into it and I blame all you dirty bisexuals! I feel like I have totally been in Spencer's position (like a million years ago) and I've totally been in Ashley's position (she's such a fuckup and I love her for it!), and they are so adorable that I just want to have kinky, depraved sex with them ALL NIGHT LONG lick them all over squeeeeze them in a totally chaste and possibly motherly way, uh huh.

3. another thing from my gay-reality-dating-show friend! I don't think I actually know any single femmes in NYC, but just in case:

...if **YOU or any of your NYC area FEMME (lesbian/bi) SINGLE friends** would be interested in having your portrait taken by a hot nyc butch dyke photographer and be filmed for the show?

during the photo shoot, the photographer may ask you questions about yourself like "what do you do? ...what's it like being single in nyc? ...got any advise on dating femmes in nyc?..."

The photo-shoot would be filmed & you will appear in an episode of the show (probably btw. 15-30 seconds of exposure time).

if you've ever fantasized about being on TV, this is your chance. the photographer will be shooting your portrait on a Lomography Holga camera. [wtf? should I be excited about the camera?]

Date: first week of January... please reply ASAP
Location: Midtown, Manhattan, (address TBA)
Requirement: you're Single, femme, lesbian/bi, and camera friendly

reply to casting@cgadtv.com, ASAP!!!!
please describe what interests you about the project, and attach a recent jpg/snapshot of yourself. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to call 646.202.2976.

I don't think I count as single, and more importantly I think I should spend my precious few january days with friends. but this does not mean I'm not totally a TV whore, kthxbye.

4. I just got a spam email with the subject "Re: unimaginative remilitarization" -- which seems like a pretty apt description of the state of our union. also Leo died! I can't really process because of, you know, the paper. but I'm reeling!

5. omg, I have to think of another one, don't I? this post is my REWARD for being so productive today. also the holiday cards I bought -- there were these gorgeous but expensive hand-printed ones that I restrained myself from, but hopefully I can get them on sale in jan. k, now I'm calling happyhop to tell me a bedtime story.

I was all technologically inspired by my discussions with new media folks yesterday. does anyone want to go in on a TXTmob with me? it's basically the same as a yahoogroup-like email list, but using txt messages to/from your phone rather than emails. we could use it just to chat or for some particular purpose (ideas? fandom??). we could dump the messages into an lj to archive them (or not). I suppose I don't have any particular goal in mind (yet), but I'm interested in experiencing the system. alternately, does anybody belong to any TXTmobs that I might like to join? (the reason that I don't txt more is that the interface on my cellie is awful -- sending pix is much less hassle.)

MT was also telling us about collaboratively authoring his forthcoming book. they used a wiki, and he says "in the end I couldn't point to a single paragraph and say whether she or I wrote it." I've never written collaboratively, but I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon (I like to imagine Deleuze and Guattari sitting at a desk together, cackling maniacally). those of you who collaborate: how does it work? I've heard reports of a certain division of labor: one person writes the plot, another the smut, for example. or there's round-robin style -- like this comment porn I read today, and on a grander scale in RPGs (as far as I understand them). do any of you have ways to intertwine even further? (I'm wildly curious about the mind-melding MO of punkensab)

more importantly, would anybody be interested in participating in an experimental collaborative-fanfic-authoring wiki?? has this or anything like it ever been done before? I don't know how realistic this is, considering how little time I have to write -- but part of me wonders if I'd write more if I were posting/contributing bits and pieces of things, without the pressure of producing finished works (even drabbles). I envision running MediaWIki (unless somebody has a better idea -- it looks pretty easy to install), with pages categorized by contributing author, fandom/pairing, finished/WIP/stub/bunny (etc.) for easy indexing. fics that were declared finished (there would have to be some protocol for this -- perhaps a parallel lj comm, since wikis aren't a good architecture for discussion) could be posted elsewhere too, with all non-anonymous authors credited (though a prerequisite for this process would of course be a less-than-robust investment in one's own author-function -- I suppose the first page would have to be ground rules). is this just another one of my pipe dreams? I don't want to set it up unless 5 or 10 people are interested in playing with it (but this doesn't mean you have to write with me -- you could invite whoever you like to write whatever you like).

*

and LJ/fandom/miscellany:

• G is writing a brilliant psychoanalytic paper about representations of female masochism in film, and we all want to help her out, right? she's including Secretary (yay!) and some weird French movie about a girl who cuts herself. is there anything else? I seem to recall that when Secretary came out, there was much discussion of an earlier (80's?) film about a kinky couple -- I even watched it, but I can't remember the name or anything else about it. it was not a very positive portrayal: the relationship was creepy and sort of abusive. what was it?? I believe I was thinking of 9+1/2 Weeks -- thanks aqua_blurr!

• wallowing in South of Nowhere has me happier than a pig in shit. I picked _southofnowhere out fairly randomly from among several fan comms. no new ep yet, but the promos (vid and stills seen there) are PORN *drools* -- also joined southof_fic and spencerashley (Spashley! *squishes*). icon from _sonicons, and media (redundantly) from southof_eps.

• SVU is really so tiresome. Casey and Liz were soooooo slashy and I could only go "euw! euw!" -- I may have finally found the pairing that is too wrong even for me (though I think I have asked quasiradiant to write it in the past -- somehow it's not as squicky without the visual) O.o

• in solidarity with the boyslashers among you, I capped the recent GAY on Nip/Tuck. this show is so gay that it has to actually poke fun at its own gayness! and speaking of gayness, who wants to write me Lynette/Nina, huh? -- it must be done.

• 100 icons! and I adore each and every one. whatever shall I do?? it's the multifannishness that kills me -- there are now 13 TV shows (Bad Girls, Battlestar Galactica, Desperate Housewives, The L Word, SVU, X-Files, CSI, Farscape, The O.C., South of Nowhere, Weeds, Voyager, West Wing) and 5 other fandoms (Harry Potter, D.E.B.S., Wicked, Avenue Q, Mary Poppins, Olsens) represented among my icons, oy -- and of course that's not even comprehensive.

• buy this!! New York based Graphic Designer Matthew Powell and Photographer Matthew Baker are pleased to announce the release of their new collaborative project, Bedside Companions, a sexy 2006 pin-up calendar benefiting God's Love We Deliver and GMHC. Inspired by the work of 1940's pin-up artists, the calendar's theme captures the coy sensuality of yesteryear, though instead of pin-up girls, they've updated the style using fourteen drag queens…and added in a message promoting the fact that safer sex is really sexy. (via girlynyc2000)