{ split subject }

i. this primary season has been painful (even though so far I've avoided voting, since I'm registered in Michigan). I've been at a loss for how to engage or respond or even articulate the crippling double-binds. so because fandom is my orientation and my native language:

deborah_judge and I (egged on by iamsab) are thrilled to present: majoritython, the women and people of color in politics challenge! we hope that this 'thon, for fanworks featuring fictional characters and real people who rule or govern or hold civil office, will redress in some small way the negativity and divisiveness, sexism and racism currently stirred up around people of color and women in power.

you can read all about Majority Rules here. this is right up the alley of plenty of folks on my flist (you know who you are), and I WANT YOU to participate. even if you aren't able to sign-up, you can contribute by trying your hand at some creative googling and inventing prompts. and by PIMPING, pretty please?! this has the potential to reach a vast number of fandoms, but only if we have help spreading the word (I've got chamalla_dreams, cj_fangrrl, and rpfs covered -- choc_fic or vidding, anyone?).

my condition for myself when committing to running this, time-management wise, was that I wasn't allowed to submit. but then I accidentally listened to a song. yeah, I may very well have signed up to make my 1st vid (though whether I'll actually finish it is another matter altogether). SHUT UP. it's a movie vid (of complete crack). I may very well have it story-boarded and meta-noted in my head. like my 0th vid, it may be something that nobody else is ever able to love a fraction as much as I do.

ii. in other news that's fit to print: I am creeping toward mental, emotional, and spiritual preparedness for the BSG premiere. inspiration has struck about my S4 project: for each episode, I plan to create some document or artifact (in keeping with the archival theme) that inserts the GIRLSLASH GOGGLES into the narrative. please send any ideas or requests by way of thearchive2.

iii. if you're feeling only a small fraction of the love I'm feeling for fandom right now (or, you know, the frustration with livejournal), consider making a small donation to become a member of the Organization for Transformative Works. OTW is building the next great home for fanworks, a not-for-profit archive with an infrastructure that supports and protects our values.

iv. the computer store gave Pythia back, all "your drive passed the hardware test." I figured my troubleshooting skills had gotten rusty. then I got her home and, yup, the hard drive is indeed still broken. so today it's back to the shop (I explained to them about writing zeros, and my poor baby made the crunching/clicking sound on cue). although rather lobotomized without it, I'm in good spirits, all things considered -- poojapooja saved what little sanity I have left by loaning me her old Vaio. and I get a new keyboard/top case out of the whole affair, and possibly Leopard, and the new memory I bought is installed, so in a few more days it will be practically like having a whole new lappy!

while I'm on the subject of technology: what platform would you recommend for an academic who needs to create a multimedia portfolio in a user-friendly fashion? blog architecture is not really flexible enough to create an archive that includes text, films, etc. there must be some social media site that offers CMS-style functionality in a web 2.0 front-end, while being more professionally-oriented than the likes of Vox or Nexo and shinier than ourmedia?

v. the photo meme (again): Ask me to take pictures of any aspect of my life that you're interested in/curious about -- it can be anything from my favourite shirt, to my cell phone [ED: it can't actually be my cell phone, because I use that to take the pictures].

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!

you heard it here first, folks. twitter is 2007's first web 2.0 breakout hit. as my semester ends, and my thoughts turn to fanfic, it's inevitable that I cook up some new absurd project. that's right, inspired by twitterfiction, I've created a twitter for tiny, tiny fanfic. this endeavor is request-based, so here it is, memeified:

Comment with a character or pairing, using an icon you'd like me to take as a prompt, and I'll reply with a nanofic of less than 140 characters. You can post as many requests as you like, but please make each in a separate comment.

Leaving a prompt incurs no obligation to participate yourself, but you're more than welcome to repost this if you so choose! Moreover, if you'd like to get your comment-responses onto twitter, you can:
a) email them to twitterfiction (twitterfiction[at]gmail.com)
b) start your own fanfictwitter! if you let projectjulie know, your entries can then appear in the collected feed: twitterfic
Formatting: when posting on twitter, precede your entry with the tag +[fandom] (e.g. "+BSG this is my story"). Note that this comes out of your 140-character allotment (sorry).

my fandoms could include any of these shows, Wicked, Harry Potter, Devil Wears Prada, probably most any movie with at least two women in it (it probably goes without saying: no boys allowed! excepting Captain Jacks). this call for prompts will remain open indefinitely, and likewise I make no promises about how quickly I'll fulfill them.

I emailed twitterfiction about this meme and haven't heard back yet. so I'm proceeding anyway -- will update if I get a yea or nay.

NB: jaiku is twitter's primary competitor. because you can include external feeds on your jaiku page, it's popular as a "lifestream" (see top user Leo Laporte or me for an example). jaiku also allows comments on individual updates and "channels" (jaikus to which multiple people can post). on the downside, jaiku currently doesn't allow you to specify a URL or other personal information -- in any case, the feature set of both these sites is likely to change/improve/converge rapidly. I'm using twitter here mostly because thus far it seems to have been more widely adopted generally/around these parts.

and after a holiday weekend of catchup, I've seen the top of my flist for the first time since, probably, february. HALLELUIA.

plus, I'm writing my remixthedrabble entries as twitter series, so I'll be indexing those here as well:

[ROUND 1] I wrote Love Yourself (The Large Sexual Database Remix) (BtVS) / trascendenza wrote me Socophilia (The Stop Motion Remix) (XF).
[ROUND 2] I wrote Caught in the Web (The Networked Remix) (X-Files+Matrix) / tinheart wrote me Inevitable (The Predestination Paradox Remix) (HP).
[ROUND 3] *skipped*
[ROUND 4] I wrote Penblwydd Hapus (The Birthday Cards Remix) (Torchwood) / trascendenza wrote me Leave This Behind (The Indivisible Remix) (BSG).

[BONUS] Four Things Laura Didn't Forget, and One She Did (BSG) for thearchive2's "microscopic" challenge.

i. I'm DONE with school (as of last friday). no more pencils, no more books (most importantly, no more GR4D1NG) for the next year (probably two) of fellowship funding. bring it on.

ii. clyde_man landed hir dream job. it's in D.C., with a far hipper company than these financial drones she's been stuck with for 20 years. this is, seriously, beyond our wildest expectations of what could come of leaving the previous clusterfuck. like kismet. but much as I said I was ready, much as this scenario makes everything far less complicated, it never seemed like leaving NY(J)C was a realistic possibility. and now, all of a sudden, it's happening. we're driving to Jersey tomorrow to pack up my stuff there and say goodbye. tuesday we're continuing on to Providence. I know it's short notice, but if anyone wants to take a ride on the PATH train to hang out with us tomorrow night, you're welcome. dinner at Sushi Tango! tea and ice cream!

iii. as soon as this iron went into the fire, I realized that NYC had been a major oversight in my summer planning. I mean, I subliminally expected that I'd be returning to the city when I leave LA at an undetermined date in august. eep! so now I'm going to try to squeeze in a visit from june 10-14, approximately. I have a plane ticket from Providence to Michigan for june 15, which in retrospect is a terrible arrangement (I could have flown from Newark, and stayed longer!). but now I'm stuck with it. so this will be a whirlwind trip devoted entirely to catching up with friends -- pencil me in, stay tuned, give a shout, etc.

iv. the rest of the schedule: clyde will be in Providence helping me pack until friday. memorial day weekend I'm visiting my grandparents. then lucky (clyde's partner!) is coming to town to finish up the packing and help with the move itself on june 2, because clyde will have started the new job (and can't carry things with hir bad back anyway). this intra-familial delegation was her idea -- so adorable! we are completely Bill and Barb and Margie.

v. apparently lucky and clyde are going to Burning Man at the end of august: anybody interested in taking me? and the boston dyke march is on june 8 (6pm) -- be there or be square!

vi. I have no number vi. mostly just my perpetual battle with time, how unlimited projects lie in wait for me inside my computer and out there in the world. I don't seem to be able to prevent myself (especially while grading, writing) from joining ficathons and redesigning layouts and playing with new gadgets (that's a "lifestream": one-stop shopping for everything I post everywhere [excluding fanfic]). speaking of which, if you've joined twitter and I haven't added you yet, give me a holler.

vii. there was a moment, as I schlepped through the Denver airport, when the architecture of taking a break from lj was actually comprehensible. I know, intellectually, that my current involvement in fandom and internet life isn't sustainable long term, but most of the time the prospect of not participating at this level seems unimaginable. lj has been a source of so much stress and anxiety for me in recent months, though, and in that brief flash in transit I could SEE the relief (of a drastic unfriending and a break from fanfic) stretching before me. writing my diss about fandom creates a sort of hilarious catch 22, however, because I can't very well de-engage with my object of study! a year from now, when I'll have hopefully finished my case studies, I'm going to re-evaluate my status.

viii. speaking of fandom stress, I followed thassalia into the fray at Denis McGrath's blog. why did I do that?? he's a friend of FL, so I suppose I felt some responsibility to raise the level of debate. anyway, my comments (down at the bottom) are clearly informed by recent MiT5-y conversations with theorynut, cathexys, et al. go team acafangirl! I had this realization, by the way, that the reason I'm not blogging publicly and making myself visible like the fanboys is that I'd rather devote that energy to WRITING FIC.

ix. the girls of Shoemoney Haus are living three of my alternate lives, and it just fills me with flaily pride. I hate that I've been away since january.

x. that meme: I asked for icons and interests from the first five folks to cross my flist. shout if you want me to pick for you!

for, in order, ana_grrl, pocketwitch, annakovsky, tellitslant, and wearemany:

( words & squares )

this is only because I'm at Camp MCM with poojapooja and we're procrastinating (I already finished all my real work for today though, IJS).

( daemon )

*

I was skeptical of this quiz, but it nailed my Michigan accent! mostly that's a "neutral" accent plus more nasal "ah" sounds.

( which American accent do you have )

I'm kicking this paper's ass, for the record (I'll be nearly 2/3 done with a drafty draft by the time I leave for california in 2 days). I should have just come to provincetown to write the week before xmas too. there's nothing else to do here! and being with the "family" makes me quite surprisingly happy, with their good cooking and strict scrabble and willingness to laugh at me (which is a gift, considering what a rough road it was for me and lucky, in the early years). but meanwhile it somehow became imperative for me to post 2+ years of icons. I always say I'm happy to share them, but never have I offered them up concertedly. varying quality (I'm improving, at least), and none as gorgeous as you can get elsewhere. icon that I'm posting with included!

credit required; comment appreciated. ( x30 random )

*

I'm on fully board with all of these except the last one:

last night we went to the Vixen, where the bartender made me a tequila sunrise with very light sunrise, and after approximately 5 sips (the amount I needed to drink to make room for more orange juice) I was about as drunk as I've ever been. I amused people and danced to music I was still sober enough to recognize as atrocious, and clyde_man walked me home immediately after midnight so I could crawl in bed and start the new year with water, advil, and NCIS.

happy 2007, everyone.

resources ~
in my time following 100x100_brushes, I took brushes by miggy, oh_pants, cyberelf, wherethewind__, inxsomniax, dragong, likegunfire, and saniagreenleaf, among others. so brushes that appear on any icons above may be by one of those lovely folks. I've also downloaded brushes from http://8nero.net. sorry I didn't do a better job keeping track...

it's a good meme, I think: 10 things I assume you know about me. I memoried all of yours (cathexys, isilya, wearemany, norah, pene, leavethesky -- did I miss anyone so far?). I didn't think I could come with 10, but then I did some navel-gazing and realized that I could. so, I assume you know (as of, mostly, last january):

( project julie )

ix. that livejournal changed my life.

x. that I see beauty in the world, and in all of you -- and strive always to give it in return. that I mean the things I say, and never take them back. that there's infinite love in me, but regrettably not infinite time -- and that if I could have any superpower, it would be one that would rectify this.

it's a bit embarrassing how poetic I can wax when talking about myself (narcissism would fall under vii. above).

I was also tagged (ages ago) by girlboymusic to do 5 Quirks (these I assume you DON'T know). of course there are many more than 5, so chosen at random:

1) I have an over-inflated and largely self-imposed sense of responsibility toward others. hence why I absolutely cannot NOT reply to comments on my posts (there's a good dose of OCD in there too). I'm still planning on catching up on all those outstanding comments from 2005, someday -- despite that fact that at this point it's so belated as to be ridiculous. at least now I have a better system (webmail) for staying caught up.

( colorful )

and tierraperfecta tagged me to write an entry about 6 weird habits/things you do/odd information...

a) I bite my lips, sometimes until they bleed (both the insides and the outsides). the thing is, I'm always going to have some fidgety bad habit -- I've gone through phases of biting my nails and picking my scalp -- and this one seems only mildly digusting, disruptive, and damaging. so I stopped trying to quit.

b) I am often told by strangers and new acquaintances that I resemble or remind them of someone. does this happen to everyone, or is it just me? perhaps it is my generic Euro-mutt ethnic heritage.

c) I hate bell peppers (capsicum!), and find this inexplicable. I have very wide-ranging tastes in food, and there is really no other common item that I'd claim to categorically dislike. when I eat them, I can understand that objectively they taste good. but subjectively, ugh. I attribute it to the way they hijack the tastes of all other food they touch, especially when cooked.

d) I refuse to use my stove (except occasionally to boil water for tea). while I like to claim that this is a matter of principle, I couldn't tell you what that principle might be, beyond my personal temporal priorities (when I first moved off campus, I thought I'd grow up to be one of those granola girls who cooks -- and I did dabble in this lifestyle, for a time, until I lost all patience for it). I refuse to spend more than 5 minutes preparing a meal (how I laugh in disdain at those "quick and easy" cookbooks that say "meals in 30 minutes!") which means that at home I eat either salads (I make a killer salad, with pumpkins seeds and dried cranberries and gorgonzola and canned salmon) or things heated up in the microwave (things from clyde_man or Whole Foods).

e) I don't listen to music. since I started grad school, I literally don't listen to it at all, not even classical music without words that I used to enjoy as background -- there simply isn't enough room for more noise in my brain. while I was working my day job I think I needed the distraction, and during that brief listening phase I managed to get my CD collection (mostly albums I chose by their blurbs out of the BMG Classical Music Club catalogue in high school), along with various tracks gakked from various friends, archived in iTunes so I'm prepared to embark upon the 21st century (I tried to capture some of the extreme randomness of my music tastes HERE -- as for rock, I take to some things and not others [usually earnestness is a big turnoff, is the one rule I could tender you], without understanding any of the context; I am (was?) a violist, and classical music was always the genre I actually knew something about). but really to explain this idiosyncrasy, I have to tell you that I used to ride the schoolbus in elementary school, and top 40 radio was always on, and through some mysterious cult of divination the other kids always knew the songs and who sang them while I didn't. I liked Weird Al, and felt like (was) a dork. but then one day I said to myself, "you know what, julie? you DON'T have to care about pop music, just because the other kids do," and I've lived by those words ever since. my flist really makes me feel like a freak again, though, what with all the squee about bands.

f) and what is, perhaps, the theme of most of these: I'm a knee-jerk nonconformist. my whole life I've wanted desperately to be special, and this has expressed itself in the whole epic arc of my being but also in the most trivial foibles (my lucky number is 6 instead of 7, and I always pick tails when I'm flipping a coin).

I'm not tagging people, no way.

and via pene and unwinding (also last january), "Five Things that Never Happened to projectjulie." there was some interesting debate about this meme, whether it's possible to write AUs about oneself, considering that one wouldn't be the same self given a different life. that doesn't bother me. I was tempted to say something about how my "essential self" predates any of the divergences below, how I can trace it to fourth grade or thereabouts, but of course I don't believe in an "essential self" so I'm a bit baffled. I supposed I could say, contrarily, that my sense of self is loose enough to encompass such parallel possibilities.

( I'm a character )

and that's how I tell myself stories (when I'm supposed to be writing a paper -- it's just, THIS was so much closer to being FINISHED; and you know, it's the end of the year, which is the time for such things).

because this post clearly needs a fifth meme to go with the fives, I'll point you back to the quiz about me.

there are things afoot. thoroughly mundane things which nonetheless have major ramifications for my life:

i. clyde_man left hir miserable job. s/he took a fat severance package which means s/he gets paid for months and months, and isn't even *allowed* to work until 2007. so this is for the win. but it changes plans, perhaps makes the future even more nebulous. clyde's in Provincetown with partner lucky for most of december (NB: the idea of hir staying with me for part of this interim period never even came up), which means I'll be holidaying there and probably not passing through NYC at all over break. clyde has employment irons in the fire in Jersey, and none elsewhere at this point, so we're still stuck with this ongoing conundrum where s/he needs to figure out what s/he wants and needs in life and I need to be here in Providence for the foreseeable future, writing. so, continuing limbo.

ii. meanwhile I had a long talk with iamsab on IM last night, which is a rare treat, and was still all giddy today. still all awed at this love. I mean wtf? this requitedness shit NEVER happens to me. and right now everything is one-step-at-a-time, but I know there are some difficult conversations with clyde on the horizon. or rather, I have a disconcerting premonition that down the road, profound personal decisions will end up being determined for me by the geographic vagaries of the academic job market. presuming I don't manage to consolidate everyone in the vicinity of Boston, which is probably a pipe dream. I'd move to LA in a second if I got an offer, but that's equally true of NYC or Baltimore or wherever clyde may be. and unfortunately, it may very well be equally true of Missouri or New Mexico or Montana or whoever wants to put me on a tenure track (presuming anybody even does).

iii. complicating foresight further is the fact that Brown recently announced that they'd prefer to yank 6th year funding for grad students across the board, thank you very much (until now I was assured that a 6th year was to be expected, although it's not guaranteed IN WRITING). I'm fortunate enough that money will never be a dealbreaker for me personally -- but still, the bastards! I'm scrambling to figure out whether I can get special dispensation to be nominated for a diss fellowship for next year (my fifth) instead of the year after (the planned timeline), so that I don't miss the opportunity for a fellowship entirely. this would be simpler if I'd taken my exams already, like I was vaguely supposed to -- but honestly I don't think there's anything I could have done differently. I'm a cylon person, not a theorywanking automaton, and I won't apologize for that. if/when I'm on fellowship I don't have to work and can theoretically BE wherever I want, though the smart choice would be wherever I can actually write, and now that question mark might be looming much sooner than expected. and I might also have to write a dissertation abstract, like, yesterday. but I'm tripping gaily forward with the exams, in any case -- I desperately need to write this giant field essay. starting tomorrow.

iv. I may very well get a cat. not a kitten, as that would be insane with the constant demand for attention and the destroying of things and the ensuing need to realistically get two kittens, but a calm and cuddly adult cat. I've been holding out for a dog (a little fluffy handbag dog), but it's increasingly clear that a lifestyle that can accommodate one is still a long way off. cats are simpler, and I have come to like them, and they can climb up into my loft bed, and I have many friends here who would take a cat for weeks or months if I'm traveling. what brought this on is that my cousin's girlfriend is fostering a mama cat and two kittens that she found stray. the mama (they call her Sophie) is apparently very sweet (clearly socialized with humans, not a feral cat) and black with white belly and paws (not my favorite cat coloring -- I'm partial to spots and/or stripes, as in all things -- but really the former is more important), and they're looking for a home for her. I'm meeting said cat on saturday, and if we like each other and I'm not allergic I may really take the plunge.

bonus miscellaneous and less mundane thing:

v. I did my presentation for the Female Sexuality Workshop last week (twice). they only gave me 50 min. to cover alternative sexuality/relationships, which is a little ridiculous, but all my investment in outlining last spring did pay off because I have this puppy honed to a science (to mix metaphors?). Harvard coming up on thursday, where I get 2 hours -- and I talked to the organizer on the phone last week re: my previous round of workshops, and she said, "you changed me and my friends' lives. you don't know, it's just a couple hours of your time, but it totally opened up our worlds" -- which was unimaginably gratifying. it's such a little thing I do, and something I enjoy so much -- sharing my perspective and experiences. so needless to say, if YOU have any sexuality-related and/or personal questions, feel free to fire at will.

and now, mundane eljayish things which have only the most minor ramifications for my life:

vi. I've returned to the present! I believe that I am once again more or less caught up on lj (*with the exception of sitcomathon fics, and a handful of tabs still currently open). that took ALL fucking weekend. I didn't comment much during the blitz, but rest assured that I read faithfully as always. I know I say this EVERY time, but srsly I can NEVER let this happen again. if you are joining me for any of my travels, please make sure/understand when I take the time to keep up with my flist. you'd think it would be a boon to my schoolwork to let lj slide for a bit so I can focus, but it just disrupts my rhythm in the long run. I'm tempted to try to actually log this (stopwatch! spreadsheet!), but probably 75% of the time commitment is BSG fandom (split relatively evenly between articles/discussion posts and fic FB, give or take on any particular week) -- so you're not the problem, dearest flist. possibly I'm getting a wee bit burned out on BSG, in fact, but hopefully that's just the erstwhile behindness talking, because otherwise I'd be at a loss for what to do about it (NB: I am taking a week off vlogging for thanksgiving).

vii. meanwhile, I wrote three drabbles [scroll to the bottom], with one a week in the works for the near future. yes yes, I KNOW. except I'm kind of in love with my tiny distopian AU based on "Torn" (which has parentheses). plus, leavethesky wrote the best BSG spec EVER! and sheepfairy reminded me that we should be upset that Caprica apparently dumped Boomer for Three (the mesmerizing blondness of Three/Six distracted me from cylon!OTP, I admit). where is Boomer when she's not doing naked tai chi?!? *riots* *riots about all other continuity issues too, just for good measure*

viii. ashfjrhglkljskh *DED* notpiecebypiece is totally right that part 5 of Mary McDonnell's Q&A is OFF THE HOOK! MIDDLE-AGED SEX! CRAAAAAAAAAZED FANGIRLS! sadly, Mary also confirms that she does not want to make out with me (she really is astonishingly gracious about it) -- so there goes my last 1% shred of hope. and may I just say: if we're going to talk about age bias in TV sexuality, can we please talk about middle-aged (her words) characters having sex with younger characters, and not just them respectively doing it with each other?! kthnxbye. (and awwwwwwwwww Mary/Katee story in part 3!!! and also she is NOT shipping R/A, ha! it's "unfathomable" for Roslin to "get involved with a MAN at this point in her life." IJS) (I haven't been able to figure out how to capture the files since they went flash -- does anybody know how I can get my hot little hands on bootleg videos?)

ix. ummmmmmm I friended back I think one or two more galacticans, but if you're not one of them and you friended me and you care if I friend you back, give a holler and I'll see what I can do. I might also have defriended a couple of people -- not because I don't think you're lovely!

x. I never meme myself because I don't have the time, but this one is easy because YOU have to do all the work! I'm sure I could think up better questions but then it wouldn't be a meme. I am marking the freebies (those which are either [O] for obvious or [A] for given away above).

( stalker meme! )

eta: nobody did the quiz! that's OK, I didn't really answer anyone else's quiz.

when I started writing this two hours ago, I did not expect it to be nearly so long and elaborate. xxx

meme haiku:

Haiku2 for projectjulie
after death much of this is reiterated in another essay
@ aboutmylife.netblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

(don't even ask how many times I had to refresh to get the perfect one)

and a real haiku (by me):

I used to make up
these intricate stories to
help me fall asleep

I had a dream that I was looking at the entries for some big haiku competition, and I learned that, among the cutting-edge literati, a haiku is no longer defined based on the number of syllables, but rather based on some other ineffable quality. at least, I don't think that really happened?

still a little whacked out, around these parts, which means I'm procrastinating. all the talk of music music music on my flist has got me thinking about my own utterly oblique relationship to it all. perhaps this post will help to explain. I assigned MYSELF a letter because I'm picky like that. 5x5 or 25 songs that begin with P (for projectjulie! and Procrastination!) of the 2087 tracks that are in my itunes. all of these are the sort of thing that I've listened to over and over and over again, and they're grouped thematically rather than mixed up as in, you know, a mix. it'll help if you know that I play (or played, it remains to be seen) the viola.

I'm too lazy to link them individually, so I put a zip of the whole collection HERE (right-click save-as). [160mb]

( step into my parlor )

I should be allowed a post, right, on the rare occasions when I manage to more or less clear out my browser tabs?

this one is about Swarthmore Guilt -- a positive aftereffect of my alma mater which refers to a powerful sense of social responsibility. in MCM we talk about time and space. the latter has always been more malleable for me. I am thinking a lot, these days, about how I choose to use my time. I dedicate these monumental chunks of it to cultivating my relationships (in RL, on LJ, in travel and correspondence), a choice which I stand by but which I'm recognizing for the first time, perhaps, as one that precludes other things -- namely the channelling of all this energy into activist projects of whatever sort. then again, the fact remains that I apparently care far more about making TV characters gay than about giving serious attention to social change, and I can make no excuse for that (I'm not buying the Slash is Subversive argument). I've said in the past that I'm waiting till I suss out what political strategies are most effective, but that alibi isn't going to hold up forever. eta: OK, to be fair, I've also always said that queer politics (and not electoral politics or other brands of radical politics) is my cause celebre, and I do spend a significant amount of my time and energy on being a sex educator, both formally and informally -- and slash perhaps counts for something, in this department. basically I just want it all to make sense by the time I get around to writing my diss.

five things that happened yesterday:

1) I ran into lonewolf_w_cub in Central Park! I was with the brain trust Quorum of Five and on my way uptown.
2) I told furies (and anyone else who likes crazy books -- I think I made happyhop buy it already) to read Memoirs of my Nervous Illness
3) I borrowed the Dark Passions books from quasiradiant -- but next up for summer reading is the book giantessmess sent me!
4) there was a drunken dramatic reading of a fanfic story -- the author of which shall remain nameless, since most of us are only a little bit bisexual mean.
5) we read e. e. cummings

five things that DIDN'T happen yesterday:

1) we were caught in a torrential downpour and got soaked. here comes the global warming apocalypse!
2) aeonian and I spotted Mary McDonnell in Columbus Circle Whole Foods, and I made Nia run and get her autograph because she is brave and I was hyperventilating too much to speak.
3) we sat on the floor in the Sci Fic section of Borders, and geeked out reading Star Trek and BSG fanboy books.
4) we didn't miss thenewhope at all.
5) there was an orgy.

I'd like to revive the book meme. it went something like: pick up the book closest to you and open it to page 123. post the 5th complete sentence on that page in your journal. no cheating!

I can't do it anymore, she realized, startled.
~ Tamora Pierce, Trickster's Queen

i . OMG I HAVE A TICKET TO SYDNEY!!! I am freaking out both from squeeeee and from having irrevocably committed to this crazy thing.

Itinerary
saturday 1/07 :: arrive Melbourne, 09:25 ~ hi giantessmess!
fly to Sydney on tuesday 1/10 or so ~ hi my lovelies!
wednesday 1/18 :: leave Sydney, 15:20
wednesday 1/18 :: arrive LA, 09:45 (neat how I get to go backwards in time)
which gives me till friday morning, probably, with Sab. but still a proper week in Sydney -- which I hope will turn out to be a good compromise (I couldn't bring myself to pass through LA without at least a little visit).

still have to book the NY-LA and Melbourne-Sydney tix, which I'll do tomorrow. but credit card numbers have been given and there's no turning back now! I'm flying Quantas.

I really would like to organize some sort of girlslash fandom convergence while I'm in sydney. aleatory_6? there are a few peeps who aren't even on my flist who I should give a shout-out to...

let me also say that I have no expectations beyond quality time with quality people. I'm low maintenance and don't have any particular ambitions of tourism. though I wouldn't mind being shown around your lives.

ii. yesterday my advisor and I laid out The Plan for the Rest of My Life, as follows:

NOW-februay 2006 :: develop course (description due)
spring-summer 2006 :: develop field lists, study for exams
:: continue work on course proposal/syllabus/CV
summer 2006 :: write field essay
fall 2006 :: take exams (while TAing) :: Sheridan Center certification
spring 2007 :: teach course :: Pembroke seminar
summer 2007 :: diss proposal
2007-2008 :: diss (while TAing) :: (and probably the advanced Sheridan certification, now that I look at it)
2008-2009 :: finish diss (while on fellowship, hopefully -- and if so I may move back to nyc completely)

because this is the crazy way my mind works, the first item of business is creating the technological infrastructure for all of this. I'm going to actually start using cyborganize as my project blog -- so this is a good time to friend her if you're interested in following my academic work. then I have to do a bunch of painful software updating of her sister site so that the LJ can be mirrored there (like this journal + http://projectjulie.net). then, I'm going to attempt to configure/customize CiviCRM to work as an online database for sources for my exams/course/diss. because why do all that work if I'm not going to share?

next semester is going to be a bit crazy, considering that in addition to the independent work I'll be carrying almost a full courseload:
• MC0120 S02 - Cinema and Stardom: Image/Industry/Fantasy ~ T./Th. 1:00- 2:20 PM + M. 7:00-11:00 PM // Lynne Joyrich [me = TA]
• MC0170 S07 - Open Source Culture: Art, Technology, Intellectual Property ~ W. 3:00- 7:00 PM + T. 8:00-10:00 PM // Mark Tribe
• MC0210 S02 - Criticism and Culture in Marxist Theory ~ F. 2:00- 4:20 PM // Phil Rosen [audit]

iii. [the following was written on sunday night:] I'm trying to watch tonight's LIVE West Wing on tape. it's AMAZING but also both boring and very uncomfortable, much like a "real" debate. I keep having to stop it because I can't deal. I'm obsessed with gathering press about it, though, so someday I can teach it. TWoP has a thread, as does coffeejunkii here, and I posted one in cj_fangrrl here (also, there's CJ/Ellen comment pr0n by me there heeee!).

I've been sticking around and hermit-ing lately to leave time for me to do a string of homework. thus far it's proceeding apace. nice not to have to be stressed out (yet). so now that I'm up-to-date on other things I've been catching up on TV hardcore in preparation for the Bad Girls marathon that's slated for after my lecture on monday. so you get another update:

( this is becoming ridiculous )

you may now feel free to lobby me to watch other favorite shows of yours. while I cannot accept gifts of commercial goods or services or direct monetary contributions, slipping some girlslash to me under the table has been known to sway my opinion.

iv. OMG OTP!!!
Ironically, while Deleuze is arguably Foucault's greatest champion, it is he who ultimately renders the anti-anthropological Foucault impotent, and, in a way, begins the process of dating Foucault.
~ Alex Galloway, Protocol (86)
get it... DATING Foucault! (but through impotence?) bring on teh Paris68 slash...

and, I know that marveling at spam is like so 2003, but sometimes I read it and it's just SO INSANE (machine language, indeed).

From: "Patsy Galvan" <heinrichygtg@breitmar.de>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 15:08:06 -0500
Subject: Windows

[a link which I almost did click but I resisted]
Tattood Nude Gay Gets Blowjob & Fucking On SofaYoung Hitch Hiker Gay Oral & Anus Fuck

A friend is someone who doesn't like the same people you do.To betray you must first belong.Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
Christ's grave was the birthplace of an indestructible belief that death is vanquished and there is life eternal.The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.Short judgments make long friends.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see it is above, not against them.There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

v. this cool photographer Lizzy Kalisvaart was covering the netporn conference, and she graciously sent along some pictures she took of me. the ONLY pictures of me in Amsterdam. [for personal use only]

this is me on my panel, trying to look all hipster-professional. it's either before or after my talk, since the compy is closed.

then she did a mini photo shoot with each of the presenters in the Albert Cuyp street market next door. each person in a different crazy booth -- mine was a fabric store.

bonus meme. to prove how much I love you!
You have a total of 103 friends
You requested to guess 20 entries.
2 were skipped due to invalid content (surprising?).
You made 18 guesses.
You got 15 correct.
Doing the math for you, that means you got 83% correct
this may not sound like much, but a couple were really short and random, like "friends only: comment to be added" and "17 HS icons." I NEVER skim!! many of them I knew instantly without even having to look at the multiple choice options. I'm not a popularity whore, I swear!
eta: mkay, I was worried you wouldn't believe me, so I did it again:
You made 19 guesses.
You got 18 correct.
Doing the math for you, that means you got 94% correct
luck seems to play a role. those shortshort entries are hard!

just a miscellany of bulletins for you, my friends, entirely devoid of personal interest. it appears phoneposting is finally working again, but during the hiatus much was irretrievably missed (notably two weekends of debauchery). I'll try to get back into the habit.

1. I'm coming to Sydney. except I don't yet have a plane ticket, and I suppose it won't be 100% certain until that happy event. but I've decided that money is no object, and I'm coming even if clyde_man can't. I'd still like to wrangle a cheap not exorbitantly expensive ticket, though -- any suggestions? my dates are flexible in the range of the first three weeks of January (mandysbitch, you can have your pick of the weekend of the 7th or of the 14th). I have to look into Priceline, consolidators, etc.

2. I'm burning DVDs on my computer for the first time in like 5 months!!! it was a matter of getting my hands on 4x DVD-Rs (and of figuring out that this was the problem exactly, which also took a while) -- I ended up having to order them from a special store online that sells bulk media. curse rapid technological innovation. anyway, I will now be able to share TV with people. in this vein:

( like Oz, but with lesbians )

3. meanwhile, I've also (finally) upgraded to Tiger! I *heart* Dashboard! my basic setup:

( organization turns me on )

all of these came from apple.com -- more info on request. rec me widgets!

4. I'm calling this genre Gnomic Spam:

( from Sonny Beatty, Re: News )

[there isn't even a link in this email ?!?]

5. I know I've already talked about my bourgeois guilt, but just for the record:

( my VERY EASY life )

[via like everyone, but mostly clyde_man. what you do is type "$yourname verb" into google.]

Julie is Her Name is one of the two best Julie London albums.

Julie is no longer a loner; she, too, learns about being a part of a community... Julie is about a girl who lives with her dad. She learns many new things [Julie of the Wolves]

Julie is an IRC bot based around the Redland RDF framework

Julie is the “love of my life,” [Jeff Probst, Survivor]

Julie is an MP3 and OGG jukebox written in Python and C for UNIX systems. Julie is a client/server system with the music daemon and the user interfaces

Julie is embroiled in a fight against City Hall regarding leaf

Julie is Jeff Bystander

Julie is a fascinating film that explores the journey of a girl who went from sweet... Julie is told that all men want from a woman is their body

Julie is back... and how!

Julie is genuinely trying to repair her fractured... "In many respects, Julie is a funny person. [The O.C.]

Julie is Coordinator of the Music Educators Workshops at SMU, and she has taught Orff Levels Training Courses at four other universities.

Julie is the editor of the Tales from the Wonder Zone from Fitzhenry and Whiteside

Julie is one sexy lady. Sometimes dressed in a partially unzipped wedding gown, sometimes in a black bikini, Julie is being exposed, so to speak

Julie is wet after getting sprayed by Steve's shower

‘Julie is not a sleazy film’ : Bollywood News

Julie, is in her late 40's. She never married and has no children... Julie is having a unique experience that no one else I know is having.

New York, Venice, Stockholm, Istanbul -- there's nothing I love more than a city veined by the sea. Amsterdam, with its rings of circulatory canals, has been waiting for me. arriving at an outer platform of central station, whose panoramic window looks out on a wide waterway glowing with early morning sun, it's hard not to be smitten.

but EU customs, you know, for some reason their stamps are almost illegibly faint. so during my europe trip this summer I outlined all of them on my passport, for my own reference, trying to identify the country and date. now, since then, I've been through probably greek and certainly turkish, US, and canadian customs, and nobody has hassled me. but here they sternly threatened me with arrest (I didn't think for a moment it would come to this, but still), pulled me aside into the immigration police office (I was the only white person there) and let me cool my heels for half an hour whereupon they let me go on my merry way after another scolding. don't write in your passports, kids -- I may have to get a new one in order to avoid such problems in the future. needless to say, this initial experience did little to endear me to the Dutch.

in its favor, however, Schipol airport features a train station, just past baggage claim. not just a commuter link with the city center, but an actual train station, with connections to a country-wide network. it's brilliant, and nothing warms the cockles of my heart like good public transportation. and it's really true -- there are an *insane* amount of bicyclists here. to top it off, I saw a rainbow through the train window, faint and fleeting amid the tatters of clearing fall rainclouds.

I'm in the lounge of the hostel, where there's indeed free wireless (paradise!), ensconsed here for the day to revise my conference paper (eep!) and prepare for section, which I'm teaching tonight at the Small Grassy Island (#92170) in LambdaMOO (hee!). tourism will come later -- though I suppose I'll have to venture out for food at some point today. and ah, the second-hand pot smoke begins o_O

livejournal is rather a conundrum. I'm caught up (post-DO) on flist reading, but far behind on comments/feedback (yet again). the semester is only going to get busier, and at some point I may have to make some structural change in my engagement here, though I can't envision what that would look like *clings*. to make matters worse, I have a habit of opening up all sorts of fic and posts in tabbed windows to save for later, and then periodically Safari crashes and I lose this crucial to-do list (as happened this morning -- in fact the computer entirely froze up and then turned itself off, which in my memory has never happened to me before). so then I have to go through my entire browser history to try to reconstruct it, which takes like an hour. and I'm never satisfied that there wasn't something I missed, something vital which will now be lost to me forever.

the past period been exhilarating but even more exhausting, and what I want most out of this trip is to feel caught up and renewed at the end of it. correspondence can eat up infinite amounts of time, and I don't know how to nurture my connections to the burgeoning number of people I love, or how not to.

*

clyde_man's family post-Rita update: people who live in Lake Charles (this would be clyde's mom and hir sister-in-law's whole family) have been told they may not be able to come home until november. ack! but the military "menfolk" who returned to the city report that there's only minor wind damage to mom's house, and no flooding. clyde's brother in Beaumont didn't fare so well -- a tree fell on his house and crushed part of it. brother in Houston is fine, but for the fact that all the Lake Charles folks are staying with them. other brother they haven't heard from but he lives further inland so probably everything is fine. clyde_man is griping that the preponderance of the aid is going to Texas, while so much of the Louisiana coast is completely decimated and not getting any attention. also note that Allstate is refusing to pay claims on flood insurance in New Orleans, because the flooding was caused by a failure of the levies and not by a natural disaster -- wow, how much do we love them?

*

I didn't watch the Emmys. I was on my way home from DO, and anyway I can't be bothered to schedule my life around dreck like that. but the other night I had a dream that heathers insisted that I needed to watch them, and lonejaguar generously provided me with vids. and then of course watching the vids morphed into me being AT the Emmys. I witnessed a playful interaction between Mariska and Allison Janney (my random RFPS OTP). then later I overheard Mariska saying she'd redesigned her horrifying web site, and I muttered "thank god" under my breath, not so quietly that she wouldn't notice. but I felt guilty and apologized to her afterwards. haha.

*

remember how I said I want to be on a reality dating show? I don't think I spend enough time in nyc to actually apply, but yay!

( gay TV casting call )

*

the memeosphere tells me when you see this, post some Shakespeare in your journal (or something along those lines), so I bring you teh girlslash:

Celia entreating her father to spare Rosalind, As You Like It I.iii

I was too young that time to value her;
But now I know her: if she be a traitor,
Why so am I; we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together,
And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable...
I cannot live out of her company.

I meant to write a slashtastic drabble after I saw the play this summer, but the actress who played Rosalind was wholly uninspiring, ugh.

and your academic quote -- this time about LJ! a parody entitled "The Buribunks: A Historico-Philosophical Meditation," written by one Carl Schmitt in 1918, is included almost in its entirety in Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (231-242). excerpts:

( every Buribunk, regardless of sex, is obligated to keep a diary on every second of his or her life )

and no, nobody has any idea where the term Buribunk comes from.

it was supposed to rain all weekend (hurricane Ophelia hit the Atlantic coast last thursday). instead, it was absurdly sunny and gorgeous and warm (with cooler nights).

this is to say (if the allegory is too subtle) that Dark Odyssey is a magical place.

there's a temptation to say something gushingly utopian about it, but it's not a space I want to idealize. issues of race and class and gender oppression don't disappear with sexual openness, and they're present at DO in palpable ways. along with the more mundane dose of clueless straight men (no offense) and bad boundaries and (more passively) people whose kinks and practices I don't particularly relate to -- the usual challenges of a pansexual (vs. a queer) environment. nonetheless, I was very conscious of how DO, as a community, is able to set aside in one fell swoop a crushing weight of disciplinarity that circumscribes our bodies and subjectivities under patriarchy. I know that sounds polemical, but I absolutely mean it. the honesty, generosity, validation that appear when you take away socially regulated ideas of what is public and private, what bodies are supposed to look like and do and feel, is profound. I had many moments last weekend where someone would say /do something that's completely nonsensical or inappropriate by RL standards, and I'd laugh and think "only at Dark Odyssey!" I mean, it's a life that looks absolutely bizarre from the outside -- except that I feel powerfully and instinctively that it's RL that's bizarre in comparison, that DO is the way the world *should* be. I know that most people (even most of the enlightened ones) aren't ready to be exposed to this sort of immersion, because it is intense and alien -- but it still makes me sad that *everyone* doesn't get to have this experience.

I am wildly inspired on every level of my being. I really reconnected with the fact that my alternative sexuality is the core of both my political and intellectual work, was reminded that in this very media-focused department it's easy to get drawn away from that (it's unfortunate I don't have an advisor who's a hard core queer theorist -- but one can't have *everything* in a grad program). so I'm recommitted to finding a coherent way to link online fandom (my presumed diss topic) to the broader questions of sexual politics in a mediated culture. this is not as distant as it may sound -- a lot of the issues I'm interested in are particular to the internet's reconfiguration of public/private and to sexuality as a basis for community and action, neither of which is foreign to fandom. but in my undergrad thesis I relied on a naive optimism about fandom as a political practice, so I'm going to have to find a more complex and extended route through this nexus. I even came up with a netart project I want to do with wetheaudience.org yesterday -- but I was sleep deprived and it may be stupid, so it's sekrit until I get a chance to think it through. just, DO made me feel like a superheroine, like I'm brilliant and beautiful and absolutely invincible. I'm behind now and have way too much on my plate, but instead of being stressed I'm energized and determined and have so much to SAY.

and also wonderful people, old and new. the best way I've come up with to describe DO is that it's a family reunion -- for my leather family! and I met butterflywing...

*

in non-DO news, cabenson wins the PRIZE of her choice (I'm assuming this will involve naked ladies) because she generously sent me the S.1 DVDs of Bad Girls! thanks CB -- I can't wait to watch them!! and I've promised to get them on bittorrent sometime soon (as soon as I work out my own ongoing DVD-burning problems).

also, I was emailed a new mindmap for some reason -- and I'm all encircled by my SVU girls! is it based on comment volume or amount of mutual friends, I wonder?

( mindmap )

doppelganger slash meta

*

in honor, of theholyinnocent, aeonian, and me, here it is:
MAULITA: Chronology of a No-Good, Very Bad Pairing

• theholyinnocent, who is a self-described smart-ass, wrote an Oliva/Maureen soap opera. I egged her on. (see my memories for the rest of the soap saga)
• I took the joke seriously [still gotta rewrite that last line]
• aeonian took it one/two steps further (note her link to a mention of Abbie/Maureen in heathers' story)
• theholyinnocent wrote the tour de force
eta: and then I bribed giantessmess into writing about the aftermath

and that's how slippery slopes work, folks. did I miss anything?

eta2: and giantessmess has pointed me toward whole new vistas of Maulita! I'm very impressed by the discussion on TwoP (that being the beginning of the original and probably most extensive thread). I'm inspired to contribute, to elaborate further on why I sail the good ship Maulita, in a way I wasn't when I was just talking to those who already live inside my brain. but not inspired enough to actually write up that post -- so I'll leave you with the words of others, and these fics by skalaney which are linked therein: Sensory Overload / Similar Features

also, I'm mildly a-squee over the possibilities of Olivia/Kathy (is this what they mean when they write "Olivia/CK"? oh yeah, "Chemistryless!Kathy" :P), but that's another post...

*

and in honor of my conversation with the snobbishly literate theholyinnocent yesterday about "books I should read before I die," I'm doing this meme. since my days as a future english major I have gone off literature almost entirely, but thanks to my bookish formative years and typically canonical education, I don't think I did too bad.

Supposedly 101 books you "should" read. Bolded the ones I have read. Italicized the ones a) I've read part of (usually because I was assigned them in school) b) where I've read a different book by the same author c) where I've at least seen the play performed and d) where I think I've read at least part of them, if I recall, but maybe it's just that I saw the movie.

( Read more... )

[secret] [...]

[BSG] so, if you subscribe to the intentional fallacy, Starbuck/Roslin [aka OTP] is now canon. Ron Moore: If you want to write a story about Starbuck being Adama's illegitimate daughter and how she's carrying on an illicit affair with Laura following an accident which flings them across time and space to the Ponderosa Ranch, be my guest. heeeeeee!!! that's via norah

but I was poking around Remember Us?, and it occurred to me that BSG has really a rather pale color palette. I mean, we've got Grace Park and Edward James Olmos (I'm right about him being latino?), and Dualla's sort of caffe latte-ish, with those amazing green eyes (probably biracial?), and there's the kind of sketch tribal priestess lady -- well, I guess that's not so bad, all things considered. but there are still about 8 human-cylon models that we haven't met, right? even given all the problematic aspects of tokenism, I'm rooting for a black cylon.

god, season 2 is already SO good. I'm SO in love with Roslin and SO in love with Starbuck (which took longer, actually -- really the full-on true love only set in with 2x02, guh) and totally fascinated by Sharon, and Six is EV0L and Cally is cute as a button and Dualla is growing on me and Billy is pretty like a girl. (and, uh, there are probably some other male characters that I think are OK too but I can't be bothered to list them.) in short, squee to the power of squee!

[me] I uploaded heaps of ancient pictures @ http://projectjulie.net/image -- this was an effort to get the gallery working and established so I can post trip pictures (eventually). updated a few things at the fanfic site. and what the heck happened to http://quasiradiance.com?! *whines*

um, what else was I going to tell you? I don't even remember. I wanted to list my idiosyncrasies (it's a meme) -- let me see if I can come up with five:

( I succeeded )

other than these I am perfectly NORMAL.

[you] via wearemany: Copy your friends list. Bold the ones you have met in real life [I will update this as such meetings occur] and italicize the ones you have talked with on the phone met in RL before/independently of LJ. With anybody you have only spoken to online, do nothing. [also, I have deleted journals that don't correspond to people or duplicate people.]

3dogcircus, _plasticity_, _swallow, aleatory_6, angharad_gov, aqua_blurr, babeeaimee, bicyclette, bluepoet, bounce_n_jiggle, boxmint, brooklyngoil, cabenson, cathexys, ceciliaregent, clyde_man, coffeejunkii, digitalexcess, eemilyvr1, eighthblackbird, epicanthus, fifthgear, franzeska, gill_is_bored, girlynyc2000, glowcuffs, happyhop, heathers, honormac, iamsab, ibrakoor, isilya, keladryb, kellychambliss, kore, laliu, leftfield18, lekiosque, leunatich, ljconscript, lonejaguar, lonewolf_w_cub, magicmice, makesmewannadie, mandysbitch, mazily, michellek, mikee_pm, museumfreak, n0r1_h, nerd_dog, niamite, pene, quasiradiant, rachelkb, ralst, residentgeek, rrreverb, sebsan8, sinful_caesar, slowmend, smallbeer, sorlklewis, spiderine, sscheckter, surblimity, thatfangirl, thedabara, theholyinnocent, tsenft, warlordkittens, wearemany, wolf_cub, zazuomgwtf

[meat, dead] indexing is INSANE.

I'm through (now, more than) three chapters/125 pages (half the book, not quite half in pages) and I just revised the subentries *again* (I'm supposed to do subentries if there are more than 6 citations for a term). oh, I was going to post it, but I guess I shouldn't if it's not flocked. 22+ pages (single spaced, 1 column) (I'll hack it down at the end -- some terms can get cut out if they don't end up appearing again). owie, brain hurts.

on the plus side, this book is invaluable for the paper I have to write, so it's actually good that I'm indexing before writing (it would just be better if I could finish indexing and start writing, you know, sometime soon). and I'm getting paid quite a bit. and I've been using the flist for mini study breaks, with the happy result that I'm caught up [filtered] for the first time since before my trip in June. am now tentatively giving unfiltered a go.

yes.