I love this movie.

The neighbors are having their annual block party, and the audio of the movie they're showing on their garage wall is filtering in my windows. And I'm watching Footloose, and enjoying every minute of it.

My best wishes to Kiro and Tav for this weekend! Congratulations, you twain! I hope your day goes smoothly and you're surrounded by loving thoughts. :) You certainly are surrounded by them here.

This afternoon I took a step back from absolutely everything and sat down with a movie that I've been lusting to see. I don't even know why I was lusting to see this movie. I had absolutely no recommendations - most of the people I mentioned it to gave me a blank look until I mentioned the father, son and holy ghost writer, director and producer: Quentin Tarantino.

And then they get that other blank look. That one that says they're flashing back on Lucy Liu decapitating people, or television previews of Rose McGowan literally shooting from the hip--midthigh, actually, or general gratutitous gore. In fact, I think if you examine the nearest Rogets Thesaurus, under synonyms for 'gratuitous gore,' you'll find 'Quentin Tarantino.'

And good god but we love him for that. It isn't the volume. It's the quality of that gratuitous gore. It's never enough to make you numb to it, just--

Whew, I'm getting a little hot. I'll save that for later. Anyway.

The thing is, after that telltale bloodlust blank stare, they shake their heads; "Death Proof" isn't familiar. Probably not.

This movie is just my brand of candy. And by candy, I mean candy laced with Jack Daniels.

( Let's tally up what we've got in this movie: )

All right. *clears throat*

So all of those ingredients wouldn't make this movie by themselves. You have to add Quentin Tarantino and whatever crazy ass people he gets to write with him. It's like six people sitting in a room with a blank piece of paper and cart blanche to do whatever the fuck they want with these nine characters. I can almost hear that conversation:

"Hey, what if this girl was a disc jockey? And what if she had awesome, I mean totally amazing, smoking legs. Like, Sydney Poitier legs."
"Why don't we just get Sydney Poitier?"
"Fuck yeah!"
"And we've got this intense focus on her legs, so why don't we do something horrific with that? Like, hang it out the window so you're all tense, going "she's gonna get that fucking ripped off. And then we DO IT. We fucking rip her LEG off!"
"Fuck yeah!"
"And then what if during the car chase, we ran them both up a random bank of dirt, Dukes of Hazzard style? And then ran Kurt Russell through a random fence!"
"Fuck yeah!"
"And what if we have the Death Proof Charger just fling some poor nameless slob on a motorcycle into a garage door?"
"..."
"...and the helmet would be red!"
"...FUCK YEAH!"

I was talking about that gore? He doesn't do gore just to shock you. That would imply that you had no connection to the characters he offs - and he does everything he can to get you attached to the character before he kills them. He does gore to snag you. Grab you by the throat and throw you into the movie. He does it to show you that he is not afraid of gore. That if somebody gets their head, their leg, their face chopped off, even if they're the hero of the movie, you are gonna fucking see it chopped off.

And then he stops. The gore absolutely stops. ...Or did it just stop for a while? When's the next time? He shows you how the pattern plays out, what happens when Stuntman Mike pinpoints a handful of 'girlfriends.' Then he shows you the pattern starting all over again. And he's so graceful about it. ...Wait, where did that one girl go? She went into the gas station. Why isn't she there somewhere? Did he take her? Are we about to see her ground into gravel? Who's that car behind them? It's not black... is it still Mike, just in another car?

This is the kind of suspense that has me curled up in my seat in delicious horror. The reason I loved the car chase wasn't because they were roughing up a pair of awesome cars. It was because Tarantino already made it obvious that if one of those girls got hurt, I'd see it in gruesome detail, after he made me love every single one of them for who they were. That man is the master of suspense.

I am in love with this movie. And the side effect of this movie that I did not, could not expect... it turned me on.

So that lack of credit-ness I was despairing about several months ago, after three years now of trying and being rejected, has finally been resolved.

I. HAVE. THE POWAH.

...And I'm not using it.

I love my dA account and wouldn't give it away for anything. But at this point, even though I could now if I wanted to, I can't make myself do it; can't upgrade. There is one major thing I plan to use this card for that's been two years in the making, but other than that, it's... for inanities. Gas and groceries. So I can finally join the twentieth century and not freak out when I'm down to my last twenty dollar bill and lack an instant access card. I look at that price tag on a year of paid dA and go "Geez... I could buy a lot of plums and yogurt with that."

And I can't do it. At least not yet. I totally am okay with dA charging for their services and I would very much like to help keep a very good site up and running with my measly thirty bucks. But I still can't do it. I suppose this is a good thing?

Maybe it's because my plans have expanded again. A year ago my plan was to get an apartment and end my existence of leeching off my mother. Then it widened to include getting a cat. Then it widened to getting a raise.

I'm looking into buying an honest-to-goodness house. Not right away, not this year. But my dreams are bigger than they used to be by a long shot, because I'm seriously considering loans and down payments and utilities and lawncare, whereas a year ago I'd have sighed wistfully over the realty section of the newspaper and wondered about what it would be like to have a library. I want a real bed and the right to paint my walls whatever color attracts me. I want the right to have hardwood floors. I want to be able to replace my windows if they're crappy, not helplessly live with shoddy seals. And someday, I want a big kitchen that reflects me. I want my place to be a waystation for my dearest friends... maybe even a haven to share with my dearest love. A place with warm light and a deep couch and earthtones and honey-colored wood floor and deep brown tile.

It's not really the things that I dream about - it's the emotions tied to them. It's the security and accomplishment of a dear dream that I'm willing to work for. And compared to that... the little subscription there doesn't mean quite so much. I can do without it. It's one tenth of a monthly payment on a little house someday.

Dear God, I've grown up.

I've been bus-ay! After freakin' forever, I finally have a new layout!

bardicsidhe

So. What did I do for Labor Day? For the first time in... over a decade... I got on a trampoline. Not a little sissy bouncer a few inches off the floor. A real, three-foot-high, honest to goodness trampoline with a net around it in case of accidents. I bounced and laughed and bounced and bounced s'more until I was completely all over sweat and exhausted and... I probably need to take some ibuprofen for my stupid bum knee. But there is very little more fun than bouncing as high as you can go and then landing on your butt and then flying again and coming to rest and feeling your heart pounding in your chest. Or running in circles taking HUGE strides like you're running on the moon. You are seven again. You are alive.

I also finally got my desire from years ago, I got The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman. I'm not in good enough physical shape to do a happy dance with enough joy to cover this.

I've already tested it. This book, you see, is almost entirely to blame for Indecent Rhythm being as... well... decent as it is. This guy has a way of asking you questions to ask your characters that feel like a knock on the noggin. Plus, he references well-known, high quality movie scenes to put a piece of narrative or a style of writing into a context that we quickly can understand. I frickin' love this book, and have for years, but loved from afar at the library until now. I own it!

I'm using it right now to try and fix a critical flaw in Lealta. You see, my poor little unicorn has a problem. She has a fairly detailed history and a goal. But she's missing some essential part of her personality, and I need to find out more about her, make some more decisions about her, so she'll be a more interesting character. And by interesting, I don't mean adding more tragedy to her life, I just mean fleshing her out with personal details and memories and vivid background so her reactions are true and consistent.

Unfortunately, she's not taking so well to being questioned.

Me: Tell me about your romantic history. When did you first fall in love?
Lealta: ... *internally: EFF U HOR*
Me: Do you regret falling in love so young?
Lealta: ... *internally: @#*%&^*
Me: ...Why are you always lost in your own head so much?
Lealta: *tailswish* ... *internally: (etc. etc. ad nauseum ad infinitum)*

:/

I get the feeling that I kind of don't exist anymore to some people. The worst part about that is I pretty much did it to myself and still have enough of that good old vague guilt that I did something atrocious and just don't remember to be edgy and occasionally down in the dumps about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy generally, but I'd like to fix the situation if I could, I just don't know how, other than to post here more often. I miss getting to post shit while I was sitting in GCOM class waiting for the teacher to show. I'm not used to coming back here and feeling so completely out of it.

So here I sit at 2AM when I should be sleeping, because I'm gonna be dead at work, but yet. Here I am. Posting for the Faceless Unknown to read this crap and wonder who the hell I'm talking about. Go me! Go go vague angst!

I probably couldn't write canon Chaseshipping for shit if I tried now. Wonder if I should even bother trying to finish IR. It doesn't feel right at all to leave it hanging indefinitely with no intention to finish it, but it also feels wrong to attempt to write characters I have no feel for anymore. And I'm dreadfully afraid that if I go back and try to watch the show, I'll be like ":[ how the fuck did I ever find this repetitive shite entertaining?"

Please ignore the writer and her whining. Carry on.

That the spacebar no longer sticks... I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I am being ginger with it and babying it in general, but Eleanor is being A Very Nice Laptop after her ridiculously long hiatus, and so there's no more anxiety and hassle for the time being.

For the curious, Eleanor's spacebar - and sometimes her c button - randomly decided to stick one day... or to be more accurate, decided to simply not work occasionally. I think something got underneath the pads, hammers, etc., whatever you feel like calling them, and messed with the sensitivity. But I realized just how much I used the spacebar when suddenly I didn't have it anymore.

Add this onto how difficult it already was to get online and you've got a solid block in my way, totally stealing my sunshine. I cleaned it out with canned air, I took a needle and poked around carefully under the keys, for a while I suspicioned that some of Simon's litter crumbles might have gotten into it because whenever I sit on the floor or whenever the computer is in an accessible place, really, Simon feels the need to try and climb on it, jump over it, etc. We won't go into how I feel about Mister Discipline Problem right now. Feeling unloved and ignored after my weekend absence, he popped my air mattress at 1:30 AM. After a four and a half hour drive? Which then deprived me of my bed for the rest of the night while the patch cured? Yes. We can has problem.

But anyway. So whatever it was, it appears to be fixed now. And for the record, I never ever sit my computer on carpeting or any plush surface directly anymore, not even my lap. It goes on a book, and between it and the book is its cooling pad. The keyboard still needs periodically cleaned out, but I do my best. Laptops just aren't conducive to hardware replacement. If you want a piece of equipment whose peripherals you can replace when they break in a day by making a trip to the local Staples/Office Max/Wal-Mart/etc., do NOT get a laptop.

So about that four and a half hour drive...

Scylla had her first road trip of DOOM.

( beware gratuitous strikeouts )

Also, for all interested parties... I think the weekend helped me relax and sort of get past the DE burnout, and take some time to breathe, be preoccupied, not think about it most of the time, and prioritize stuff without the immediacy of it right in my face.

I still can't promise a ton of time, but I think the writing bug has bitten me again, at the very least. Which will definitely, definitely help.

Scylla (the unicorn) has her own theme song. Like... it went from just casually liking a song to hearing this one and suddenly seeing her own life arranging itself in a music video to this song. I have forthwith been convinced to redecorate my journal (at long last) in homage to it.

"I Will Be There" by Glass Tiger. Thank you, Pandora. I have a very happy little pony right now.

Click here to go to their last.fm page and you can find the song in their playlist.

Mamma Mia! Needs to become a cult classic, a la Rocky Horror. If you've seen it, here's me hoping you get what I'm on about. Why do we only have ONE Rocky Horror phenomenon? Why is that our only option?

I will work with all interested individuals in a grassroots campaign to make that adorably ridiculous and inexplicably awesome movie a legend in the halls of urban myth and young adult rites of passage. Let's break out our parents' silver lamé and our feather boas and pay homage to ABBA and all of the middle-age actors who made this movie so abso-friggin-lutely wonderful.

It's a damn shame that movies are such a luxury that we can't go see it fifty times. BUT I WANT TO. OHMYGAWD.

I wish Blooness read this journal. We could recast that movie with Bibble playing Meryl Streep's role. I get so many grins from Bibble's innocent and joyful licentiousness. XD

Title: Fish For the Devil
Rating: PG for language and some mildly sexual content (no kissyface, promise!)
Fandom: domino_effect
Summary: Trapped in the lobby of a clothing store with Em and Scylla making no promises of shopping any faster, Joey and Tristan find a way to amuse themselves via Emily's tarot deck. If you can't guess how by the title, I'm not gonna tell you.
A/N: Holy hell. I haven't posted anything in ages and then I throw you half-coherent and mostly irreverent dreck?
___________

"Do you have any cups?" Tristan glanced up at Joey over his current fan of twelve cards. They should have known better than to play "Go Fish" with only two people, and he had the miserable card count to prove it. They played out of boredom, trapped in the lobby of the clothing store while their companions were off doing something arcanely feminine.

( 15 Minutes Previously... )

Title: Five Things That Never Happened During the Firebringer Trilogy
Author: bardicsidhe
Rating: PG
Warnings: Contains (non-graphic) character death.
Summary: Written for that darn Five Things challenge that I can't for the life of me find a link to the rules of. If someone knows, help me out? I wore myself out googling for it.
Note: If you feel like contributing, the gauntlet has been thrown down here. If you want to write but can't post there and don't want to join the Group, just let me know where it's posted, and I'll post a link on the challenge board once you're finished so that the group can find your story and enjoy it too. :3

*****

For the whole of the homeward journey, Tek's forehead ached with the firebowl's burn. Yet it was no match for the slowly smoldering ache within her heart. She wondered if it always would. She hoped so. Like the stories of the lightning storm three hundred years before that swallowed a quarter of the mountain firs, Tek imagined her soul would lay like dead dark ash and smoking coals even beneath a soaking rain.

She had survived the wyvern queen's sting only with her mother's late help. The wyvern queen, killed at the cost of Jan's life.

( Read more... )

Okay, breathe Scylla. They are just cartoons. Comic strip characters. Breathe.

Oh, who am I kidding?

This made my heart beat a little faster today. Oksana is a bit character created for a surprisingly epic storyline surrounding an 80's "geopolitical Ping-Pong movie." I should have known that I'd fall in love with this story - after all, they included a bat'leth-swinging preteen in Armadeaddon, and they are a remarkable force when it comes to imitating genres or creating atmosphere, such as The Hawk and the Hare.

But Paint the Line? Oh, man. Even with only a few episodes, it steals my heart. And that last panel, whew! Mike has the ability to throw so much emotion into so few lines - I know artists who would do anything for that talent (I'm one!). Whereas a lot of webcomics use witty humor to cover up shitty art, or magnificent art to cover up a shitty storyline, Penny Arcade maintains quality in both art and story. They glory in the ridiculous, poke fun at their hobbies and themselves, and understand their craft to a level that's got to be the dream of any budding comic artist.

Just wow.

And also, Tycho/Oksana FTW. You go, Communist Bit-Part Girl. You fucking go.

♡ the 『feel good』 anonymous meme ☆ﾐ

I felt like it. 8D

Also, I didn't know this existed on livejournal. I'm not sure I'll ever have a need for it, but... it's... cool?

I've just joined the Street Team for No More Kings. Not like they're likely to come here to B-town, but, you never know? Hope springs eternal. I was gonna toss them at the guy who books entertainment acts as a possible act for FloodAid because they're going to be coming through the state on their way to Indiana right around that time. But he was so frazzled today that... no... bad idea to pitch an idea when Manager is Grumpy.

But still. I'm a Kings' Man. XD Woman. Whatever.

1749 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded.
1788 - New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution of the United States and is admitted as the 9th state in the United States.
1877 - The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants, are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.
1898 - Guam becomes a U.S. territory.
1940 - The first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage begins at Vancouver, British Columbia.
1948 - The "Manchester Baby" (SSEM) runs the first ever computer program stored in electronic memory.
1948 - Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
1957 - Ellen Louks Fairclough is sworn in as Canada's first woman Cabinet Minister.
1964 - Jim Bunning of the Philadelphia Phillies throws a perfect game againist the New York Mets and becomes the seventh pitcher to do so.
1983 - bardicsidhe is born.
2000 - Section 28 (outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom) is repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote.
2006 - Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix & Hydra.

Notable Births (besides bardicsidhe):
1002 - Pope Leo IX (d. 1054)
1528 - Maria of Spain, Holy Roman Empire Empress (d. 1603)
1646 - Maria Francisca of Nemours, queen of Portugal (d. 1683)
1712 - Luc Urbain de Bouexic, comte de Guichen, French admiral (d. 1790)
1732 - Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German composer (d. 1791)
1850 - Daniel Carter Beard, founder of the Boy Scouts of America (d. 1941)
1950 - Joey Kramer, American drummer and percussionist (Aerosmith)
1959 - Kathy Mattea, American country singer (performer of 455 Rocket(!!!))
1962 - Takeshi Asami, Japanese racing driver
1966 - Mancow Muller, American radio personality
1982 - Prince William of Wales, British prince
1984 - Alicia Alighatti, American pornographic actress
And a friggin boatload of hockey players.

I want these shirts.

That is all.

RAWK.

Why am I up again?

Flood update: Mom and my brother got up early this morning to help a friend of the family evacuate his farm. I'm still so exhausted that I didn't do more than stir when my brother came in and explained what was going on. I've been freaking out all morning and trying to distract myself, but just now I got a call from Mom -- everyone's all right, the family's all right, and on top of that, they rescued a ton of cats before the water comes in.

There is a mama cat with a litter of kittens in my brother's truck right now, and they're coming home.

I used the Dresden icon because. Burly brother rescues kittens? Uh huh.

Just out of curiosity... has anybody else been getting random gobbledygook spam comments on their journals? Given that LJ actually has a 'delete as spam' option, I'm guessing it's not new, but these are anonymous rather than comments dropped by specific journals. It's not like it's a big deal, deleting them handles it, I'm just curious.

If anything, it's actually a blessing in disguise. In coming over here to delete it, I remembered that I needed to update.

My dragon didn't survive. Damn. :(

Sent sorchafyre on her way back home about fifteen minutes ago. I hope there's no trouble for her getting home, at least no more than there already is what with all the closings on her usual route. ysabet, I should never have said 'hell or high water,' because that's exactly what we're getting. Downtown looks like a war zone with the walls of sandbags, towns have been evacuated, levees are in danger, main thoroughfares are flooded... this is getting serious. I'm safely out of harm's way, but I mean, god, it's my town, and these are my people.

If I can get hold of a digital camera, and you're curious, I'll show y'all soon. Just keep us in your thoughts. Things can be replaced. But we've already lost four boys in a flood-related accident, and all I can hope is that there's no more.

Borrowed from perivates

step 1: put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
step 2: post any damn line I like from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
step 3: post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
step 4: strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
step 5: looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!

Today is a mental health day. That's why I'm here.

*****

( lyrics )

WTF is up with ads in my NY Times Regional feed? WTF?! There are ads in my RSS FEEDS. Dude, I paid for my journal. I paid not to see ads. So what is this fuckery. Did these come from NYT, or did LJ figure out a new way to tack on ads?

Honestly, what makes you think I'm at all interested in this? I couldn't even tell you what they're for.