{ split subject }

thanks to museumfreak, I now know about LoudTwitter, which means you will no longer be able to opt out of seeing my tweets! *mwahahahaha*

if it works as directed, a digest from Twitter should appear here once daily. so if you're one of the two people who are following twitter_pjulie you'll probably want to unsubscribe.

also, I will now suspend RSS archiving of individual tweets at projectjulie.net, FYI anyone getting those digests (levinc).

those of you who are actually on twitter with me: YOU WIN! and sorry about the duplicate posting to which you will now be subjected.

i. I forgot to commemorate my eljayversary! it's june 11. apparently I didn't celebrate last year either, so, no memes here. but still, I love you lj!

ii. over the past three days I undertook a semi-massive redesign of my fanfic empire. baby pink is now chartreuse, purple is now darker purple, brighter and less cloying, everything matches projectjulie.net, and I'm SO much happier. even *I* get sick of pink sometimes. this was perhaps not my finest hour in time management, but the project was on the list so I was bound to do it imminently in the course of my procrastination, anyway.

in addition to converting my color scheme, I indexed all my fanstuff in del.icio.us (which took FOREVER -- but it was worth it). I would HIGHLY recommend this system to anyone who has to maintain a fic index! you get a front end for easily adding things, and then this doohicky enables you to dump the lists automatically into your own pages (my example). (NB: this won't work within LJ, because it doesn't allow javascript.) so I now know some interesting statistics:

- I've written more stories than I thought -- 16 (with 3 more to come this year)
- my remixthedrabble entry was my 50th drabble! *confetti*
- between writing it and making other people write it, I have personally generated a LOT of doppelcest
- I really am more obsessed with BSG than with anything ever

- most importantly: I think I've missed some presents, oh noes! normally I'm pretty OCD about filing them, but I feel like I've been leaving a fair number of meme prompts lately, and I can't imagine nobody has gifted me anything since Five Things went around last fall (oh wait, michellek's commentfic!). if you remember writing me something in the recent past, however tiny (or EVER writing me anything that isn't on this list), PLEASE PLEASE give a shout! since I make every attempt to delegate ideas before I break down and write them myself, presents are an especially important part of my fanfic life.

I also customized cyborganize to look like the drupal site. next up: converting ALL my old fanfic and personal links to del.icio.us. I'll leave that till a future bout of procrastination.

iii. while I was happy not to be overscheduled during my whirlwind visit to new york, in retrospect I could have been a more aggressive planner. I missed about three close friends in ways that were probably avoidable, and I'm so sad about that. not to mention all the folks I didn't even have time to contact! nonetheless, I was overjoyed to catch up with T, girlboymusic + furies (during her brief wakefulness -- wish it had worked out for longer!), D + LC, katia, thenewhope + quasiradiant, and bounce_n_jiggle + nerd_dog.

I'm coming to the realization that I have an abnormally large number of friends. I'm not sure how to talk about that without sounding self-aggrandizing -- just, it's a constant struggle to maintain my relationships with all these people who I dearly love. at some point in life my strategies in this department may have to radically change. for the moment, I'm thinking about my holiday cards.

relatedly, I'm zipping through my flist right now (catching up once more) and I feel like I'm not commenting much. but believe me when I say that I'm the most obsessive-compulsive lj-er ever, and if you're on it that means I'm reading your posts avidly. if I'm forced to filter or defriend again I'll let you know.

iv. july 1, folks!! now's a good time to start watching majoritython for news about my shenanigans in and around la casa shoemoney (especially concerning one very special inhabitant) and its virtual environs. does anyone in LA want to take me or let me take them to a yoga class once a week?

v. I'm posting Big Love prompts at sisterwives. if you've ever had any inclination to slash that show, please do so now! and if you're not watching it, get on that asap!

plus, I just added a bunch of stuff to my femslash fanvids playlist. help me find more on imeem!

( imeem playlist )

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).

obviously none of YOU need this, but several proto-blogger friends have asked me to advise them recently in my capacity as an internet-based life-form so I went ahead and wrote up a guide. I welcome your corrections, additions, and comments! feel free to share this post with any potential converts (grown-up link).

I'm assuming the n00b is looking for a hosted platform (i.e. a service you sign up for, rather than software you install on your own domain). here's an overview of what I see as the best and most popular alternatives:

( livejournal, vox, blogger, typepad, lifelogger )

ok, I gave you 24 hours -- the sale is closed!

$500 OBO
compare to: Powermax | ebay

12" Powerbook (aluminum) - 3 years old (1st generation)
867MHz G4
40GB hard drive
640MB RAM (128MB built in)
superdrive (reads and burns CDs and DVDs) [replaced once under warranty]
AirPort extreme, bluetooth
firewire, USB (2), ethernet, modem, audio in/out, mini-VGA
brand new battery (through an Apple recall)
wiped and restored to original software, with an OS upgrade to 10.4

comes with:
TWO power adapters
original video adapters (VGA and RCA/S-video)
original CDs and manuals
black neoprene/nylon sleeve

its quirks:
- the drive will eject any CD/DVD when the computer restarts or wakes up from sleep -- I have no idea why
- if the latch gets fussy, you can re-magnetize it with any magnet
- not in pristine condition, cosmetically -- I didn't beat it up too badly, but it has a few scratches on the case

*

$50 OBO
compare to: ebay

3rd generation iPod (with the row of buttons along the top)
Mac NOT Windows
15GB
clear plastic hard case with dock and built-in stand
original black sleeve case
AC adapter
firewire cable
that thingy with the buttons for the headphone cable
original software and manuals
NO original earbuds, sorry about that -- I can include a black earbud headset if you want

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.

i. one "star journal" left to grade, folks, ONE (the longest one, probably 40 pages and requiring comments at the end -- but still only one), and I've haplessly failed at finishing my semester by today (which is now yesterday). so I'll send it off in the morning (so help me!) and poke at LJ for a bit and then devote what will hopefully be a sizable chunk of the rest of the day (and night...) to my getyourtoaster:Starbuck story which, frankly, is all I've actually been interested in working on for the past week and counting. but it's daunting, and I can't multitask. if I don't finish it tomorrow I'm DEAD MEAT. meanwhile, in the course of procrastination, I spiffed up my lj layout a bit (working off css by faceon) and uploaded some new "loyalty" squarethings (including this shiny new default, which features cygnus). so things are looking up. wasn't I supposed to become less busy, though?

ii. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help spread the word about our final project: Opensaurus, a playful, educational, and activist celebration of copyleft and the public domain. At Opensaurus, you can:

- Learn about copyright issues and free culture through the humorous drama Tales of Opensaurus.
- Send ecards of Creative Commons-licensed images to your friends, and add more images to share as ecards.
- Sign email petitions urging copywrong corporations to cease and desist sending cease and desist letters! You can also create your own campaigns.
- Watch and share Hallmark-style video cards supporting Creative Commons, as well as other CC-licensed videos.

the other group did a workshop and BYOMP3 party for their final project, so as a reward for poking around our site you get audio! an entirely random selection that, in the opinion of a dance-phobic nerd who doesn't listen to popular music (namely, me), has good danceability. surprise songs!

( ysi links )

this message will self-destruct (probably in less than 24 hours -- I sent them last thursday night, I think).

iii. I was going to ask lj for advice, as follows: I need a sidebar-type indicator that displays my location (city). far tinier than WAYN, perhaps along the same lines as imood. preferably with social-networking capability and/or an SMS interface, but really the only crucial feature is that I be able to update it quickly and easily.

I need this because I'm going to be running all over the place this summer (and thereafter), providence nyc boston etc. without a lot of advance planning, and you want to be able to keep track of my whereabouts, don't you??

but then I went to Johnny Rocket's with _plasticity_ (we've been attached at the hip, lately -- studying together virtually every day), who was in the midst of research for his paper on ubiquitous computing, and he said "Have you heard of Plazes?"

which led to one of those mind-blowing moments when the most intimate, intricate efflorescences of my subjectivity converge with my intellectual passions in a technology of daily life.

in short: every time I go online, Plazes logs my location and puts it on a map. it does this automatically if I'm using my own laptop; otherwise I have to log in. if it's not a location (a "plaze") where I or another Plazes user has been before, I can define its name and attributes.

there's such poetry to the idea that I, an internet-based lifeform, can leave this trace ("traze") of my physical presence every time I touch cyberspace.

and there's also such profoundly totalitarian potential implicit in this fantasy of complete tracking. I was reading this book, The Innocents, about convicts who are exonerated of their crimes after years in prison, and one of them has become an advocate of GPS anklets that log your movements at all times, a perpetual alibi.

basically I could write a paper about this right now, but I'm bundling my more extensive thoughts in with the post about privacy that cyborganize is (theoretically) going to write. but in terms of the practical concerns, I did think a lot about safety when I was configuring my profile. not that it wouldn't be easy to stalk me if you put your mind to it, but there's something about this sort of powerful aggregation of the virtual-RL intersection that seems to invite it (or at least to generate those anxieties). you can make your info visible only to your Plazes "friends," but that does me no good since none of you have joined yet (hint hint). so I opted, counter to my usual practice, to include as little identifying information about myself as possible (no name, photo, URL), and of course to give no street address for my house and other private spaces (I did put addresses for the office, the cafe, etc.).

the site's in beta and has got some bugs still -- Xs aren't showing up in the right spot on the map, for one (complicated issue with generating lat/lon data and google maps licensing, apparently). but it's going to be one of those next big things.

iv. IT'S HERE!
by Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their secret love child I WANT ONE. and so help me, I want a black (gratuitously more expensive) one! curse you, apple. not that I'm particularly fond of black laptops (pink, I say!), but I'm even less fond of white ones (no offense to parents of ibooks). I've been saying I'll wait for back-to-school specials at the computer store, but I don't know if I can hold out until august -- I actually made an invoice today at the online store and emailed it to myself. I CAN at least hold out until I've plowed through some of the computer-y stuff on The List. or, at least until they sell neoprene sleeves in the right size, natch.

v. another Real Sex sighting on tuesday, heh. "Excuse me, did I see you on TV?" when I was all in sweatpants and grading emergency mode, too, but at least it was a bright spot of amusement in an otherwise dismal day.

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...

the hard drive update: after I spent all day rather frantically determining what my options are (the final decision: accept the loss and reconstruct as much as I can this weekend [the list was already in progress]; then [presuming I can get it removed, which turned out to be complicated] give the drive to clyde's genius data forensics friend to see if he can resurrect the remaining disappeared files), tonight [yesterday] the little bugger decided it would mount! so I pulled all the data off it using the $99 program Data Rescue II and voila, crisis averted. oy, what a day!! I did some reintegration and then immediately burned a DVD of the crucial files so I won't be running off the external drive without a backup while I'm waiting on the new HD. [someone asked what my backup protocol is: in theory, if not always in practice, I keep a complete clone of my system on an external drive, which I synchronize regularly using ChronoSync. then I also keep a second copy of the life-or-death stuff in some alternate location (sometimes on my iPod). but be very careful when making backups! -- my last big loss of data, in 2002, was because I accidentally cloned my drive in the wrong direction *headdesk*]

meanwhile I was supposed to finish grading papers by today, and totally didn't. so I'm doing them now.

my obsessiveness certainly surfaced in this situation, and I couldn't concentrate on anything else until I had made this epic list of things I need to do in the immediate future. I'll be at my grandparents' house in florida from friday-monday, and now they DO have wireless internet for the convenience of the family, and I've decided this weekend will serve as my much-needed, long-awaited, reclaim-control-of-my-digial-life retreat. plus the list alone assuages much of the meltdown that was *already* in progress when the drive went down on tuesday, and which is perhaps understandable given its length. mostly for my reference:

( todo )

obviously I can't do all of that in two days, especially with my family around (as an aside: my grandfather is having this totally narcissistic freakout about my haircut, so I'm enjoined to wear a hat or bandana all weekend -- perhaps even my grandmother's wig). but I can dream.

vancouver was glorious, which of course meant that the hell to which I returned was inversely proportionally horrific. mostly in the grading papers department, the usual, but also in the department of having a mile-long list of things that I'm not keeping on top of just in terms of my LIFE. I cannot tell you how full of RAGE and ANGST this scheduling snafu that I've gotten myself into is making me. because then my hard drive died. dead dead deader than a doornail, Disk Utility and Data Rescue II which I was going to try can't see it at all. on the upside this probably means that it's the hardware mechanism of the drive which has failed, and that the data structure on the drive is fine. right? on the downside this may mean that IF I want to recover data the only way is to send it to special people who charge a lot of moolah. right now I'm running off an external clone of my HD -- sadly, this backup is about a month old, because I SUCK (and also this is scary because it's now my ONLY copy). I don't even want to start to think through what's recoverable or live-withoutable and what isn't, because I just want my drive back how it was :( !!! anybody have suggestions, beyond or other than sending it to Tekserve? it's just that since they won't take the drive apart, I'm not optimistic about them being able to read it. but I'd gladly pay the several hundred bucks they'd charge if they could; though not the several thousand bucks Drive Savers would charge.

just exactly what I needed, today/this week in particular. now I can't even recover all the tabs I had open in safari, because I don't have my browser history! so I have no idea which of your posts I was planning to comment on tonight. kill me now.

things to remember:
• my sticky notes are miraculously backed up on my ipod, and I just pulled the draft of a Starbuck/Roslin story that I wrote on the airplane on actual paper (!) out of the trash can
• with the rest of the insanity, I don't think I've written much else in the past month -- a few things I'd mourn (like the excerpted paper I read at the conference), but nothing crucial
• I was more or less caught up on email, so losing that wouldn't be a great tragedy either
• and my music is all on the external drive, so I can still complete my mashup assignment for tomorrow
• me and mine are healthy, I'm doing what I love, and if this is the worst mishap to befall me this year life is looking pretty good

yeah, the obligatory dead drive post. fuck.

1) yes my friends, I've gone AWOL. I left for nyc on thursday immediately after my last class. it took a few hours for this last-ness to sink in, but about the time I got on the subway I found myself wondering "why am I planning to head home on monday?" luckily, I'd packed most things I needed (though an electronic copy of Lacan's essay on the Mirror Stage would help, if anybody's got one), and I'm now camped out deepwoods-style: no friends to see, no external hard drive, two pairs of pants and three sweaters (and one pair of legwarmers). and no phone, because I forgot it! so really no distractions, except spotty bootleg wireless and the lovely clyde_man who makes finals fun. so why have I only written 7 pages of my 30-page term paper?? I'm managing the 2 or 3 pages a day that I forced out back when I was depressed and panicking -- this seems to be about what my brain can manage regardless of mood. which would be fine, except it would be nice (not indicative of my entire worth as a person, but certainly NICE) if I could finish this puppy by monday at the latest and thus scrape by without incompletes (for the first time ever in grad school). but it's not looking promising for this scenario, unless I can start writing faster (I wish I were the type to take speed, or something). on the upside, I don't anticipate any crises (funny how those disasters were always precipitated by me being all "if I don't finish by X date I FAIL AT LIFE," and if I don't tell myself that there is no need for crises), which means it's near-certain that I'll finish before christmas (also for the first time ever in grad school). back in provi on friday, as my class has final presentations and clyde is leaving town.

2) meanwhile I'm woefully behind on commentz, *again* (backlog at over 100, and rising) -- compounded by a whole bunch of old ones that LJ *just* decided to send along -- but I finally got smart and decided I'd save such projects for AFTER I finish my term paper (yet another reason I'd prefer that to happen in the next week). I'm prioritizing non-flist-ies -- as for the rest of you, I beg your patience. reading at least is under control, as is FB-ing (though I accidentally closed another bunch of tabs today, so shout if I seem to have missed something).

3) I should be thinking about presents, eh? I want a bedazzler!! me wielding a bedazzler is a truly frightening scenario -- sequins are the sort of thing that would set me off on an obsessive decorating rampage to the point of blinding all passerby with my sparklyness. maybe I'll ask mom to buy me yarn for the sweater I've been planning to knit for years, to motivate me to remediate my lapsed craftiness (but hmmm, I also want the MoMA menorah). beyond that, I can't think of anything! I have all the material possessions I could possibly desire. of course, I'd always welcome FIC! you know what I like. but I suppose everyone wants fic for the holidays, plus everyone is writing yuletide and this and that ficathon/challenge. my one heartfelt and modest request would be for somebody to take up the the last straggling letters on my ancient drabble-a-thon (heathers, I reserved J for you, but just this once I'll give you a pass if you need to bail). barring that, I want voice posts as my present! especially if you're not American (but have a way to cheaply call a US #, which unfortunately is all that exists) -- isilya talked and I just about died. go here to set it up, and here to look up a number in your area. and then quasiradiant has coffee of justice for you to buy and there's of course my list of worthy non-profit orgs (WIP).

4) speaking of isilya, she made this emergency group LJbackup where we can gather in any future contingencies like the Great LJ Blackout. you should join.

5) HAPPY HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! (<<< yes, I am one of the EVIL secular Jews who is waging a WAR on CHRISTMAS!)

I have been in awe of all you holiday-card-senders. the idea of me corresponding by mail just made me laugh. but you know, I got a couple cards, and I had this EPIPHANY that all you have to do is write "happy holidays, I'm thinking of you" and sign it. and OMG, I can totally do that! I am now INSPIRED, mostly because I have been very sad of late about how badly I've done at keeping in touch with my non-LJ-ified friends (I worked on my list and I'm looking at in the vicinity of 100 cards, between high school and college and grad school and new york and summer and LJ friends -- IF I can get current addresses for all these people) -- but I'm happy to send cards to all y'all too! here, give me your address (poll data is locked down) [even if I already have it from your card to me it can't hurt to enter it again]:

Poll #632682 holiday addresses
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 13

where should I send your card?

they might be late, but I'm determined to do them. (now I can go back and buy those cards I coveted when I was shopping with wearemany but thought I'd never use -- but I should use up some of my stash of non-holiday-specific cards from back when I used to write letters too.)

*

i) TV stuff? a few of my backlogged comments are about South of Nowhere's 3rd ep (actually 1x04 since the first was double) -- since then there have been two more. I have all of them, but you can probably get them from southof_eps faster if you still need them. also, check out what bozos the folks at Lost are! you can totally see the horse trainer's hand at the right edge of the frame. (I had a dream that I met Michelle Rodriguez in a dorm and she was a lesbo, mmmmm.) thedabara: do you still want the last 3 episodes of Rome? I'm finally watching them.

ii) I'm still working on the Gay Girls S.2 compilation, hopefully to be finished before the holidays, but meanwhile here is the torrent for 1x01 through 2x02 as individual eps (better than the last version). I'm seeding sporadically and not until friday.

iii) for reasons which shall remain nameless (not to do with the paper -- though I still need an amateur webcam to write about, probably), I had the sudden, unprecedented urge to get a webcam! I'm cluless -- I suppose I'd be most interested in video chat and in recording video, rather than in broadcasting to the net ala homecams. can webcams capture video? can one video chat unilaterally, that is, can I send my image to someone who doesn't themselves have a camera? all these questions pertain to OS X. does anybody know about the iSight? another item for the wishlist? I can't tell if it does anything beyond iChat AV. according to comments one can use to to talk to Windows slaves users, which could be cool because clyde_man's new laptop has a built-in camera!

iv) and on the theme of Ask LJ: I strongly believe that I should NOT be using MS Word because it is the epitome of both badly designed software and evil monopoly capitalism. but I DLed Open Office, and frankly I can't deal with how UGLY the interface is. does anybody have a suggestion of a *prettier* free or cheap full-featured word processor that can talk in .doc format?

v) I got the tentative schedule for sci-fi panels at PCA -- the focus is Battlestar Galactica, which is what I'm presenting on. and OMGOMG there's a special session on s2e09 that Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol) is going to be at! I know there are those of you who engage in regular (more or less accidental) celebrity encounters, but I am not accustomed to this and am having fangirl paroxysms! thank goodness it's not one of the women or I'd probably hurt myself. I assume it's going to be fairly small -- not like a con with 1000s of people -- so I'm all trying to plan out what questions I want to ask, and how to strategically introduce my critique of the Lack of Gay on the show (if I have to pick one problem that I want to bring to the attention of anyone and everyone official, it's that one). the discussion is supposed to be about how BSG "reflects" (those would be theory-snob air-quotes) contemporary (the description says "modern" which is so my theory-snob pet peeve!) American military campaigns, so steering it to gender and sexuality may be challenging (maybe I can use aeonian's point about how gay it is for Starbuck to be flying the ship named Laura, heh -- actually, the question of gender and/in the military on BSG would be a perfect segue [of course the custom of referring to ships in the female dates from the days when only men sailed them]). anyway, eeeeee!!! this isn't till April. it's so not my field, and I'm going mostly for fannish and friend-visiting purposes, so I'm not sure how much of the conference itself I even want to go to. museumfreak has to come be my buddy! (it's only $65 to register, fyi)

I took half a flexoril and I'm not yet feeling the effects, but probably I should join clyde in sleep regardless. wish me good writing...

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)

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 )