Now feeling: sick

I was meaning to post about my primary school reunion, which I went to yesterday, but I came down with a horrible cold that's trying to morph into bronchitis. Augh. OTOH, it's a good excuse to indulge in childhood cold remedies inviolving copious amounts of sugar and alcohol. Grog: the cure for what ails ya. Arrrrr!

Now feeling: awake

For my own reference, and so people can beat me about the head and shoulders for encouragement should anything take their fancy, current WiPs and bunnies:

• Magical knitting novel thingie;
• Firefly huggin!drabbles;
• Firefly wingfic;
• MCR Au in which Gerard does reverse graffiti and other people do things like guerrilla gardening and it's all just too precious for words;
• FBofW "fixit fic" weirdness.

Now feeling: annoyed

Okay, seriously, universe, this has ceased to be amusing. First my USB stick eats the two folders I use on a regular basis (the one with my quotes and to to files, and the one with ALL MY WRITING) and now it pretends to be COMPLETELY EMPTY altogether? FUCK YOU AND ALL YOUR OFFSPRING! As if I was't annoyed enough at having to re-adjust to a Belgian keyboard, dammit.

And of course it pulls this shit after I've smished the desk and table that needed smishing so now I have nothing to take out my annoyance on, dammt.)

Now feeling: aggravated

Apparently the way to get my brothers to do something is to start doing it myself and show them up in front of their friends. Sigh. (I am Melle, contstructor of things, attacher of fridge handles, disassembler of Large Unwieldy Desks! (Melle SMISH!) FEAR MEEEE!)

Other things going on in my life: knitting wristwarmers and OMG SOCKZ, poking at the Wingfic and the bunny for the bandom AU ... thing that's rattling around in my brain, as well as the magical knitting novel. Which is a novel about magical knitting, not a magical novel wot knits, cool though that would be.

I've also been keeping up with my blogroll, and, um. Is there a brain-stealing pickpocket (pickskull?) on the loose in the Republican party or something? "Community organiser" is a bad thing now? The hell? (Yes, I know it's dog whistle-ese for "uppity negro rabble-rouser", but still. They had to have known that was gonna get mocked all to hell and back.)

So I was reading a whole mess of fic yesterday, and came across a meme that I’m going to viciously steal in an attempt to get back to writing. Because I have a block right now about writing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell stories, because lord, can I ever. So.

Ask me to tell you a story. Any of my fandoms, crossover, or AU will work, pretty much — like, “Tell me about that time MCR were actually all girls and Frank Iero was the hottest lesbian ever,” or “Tell me about Legolas and Gimli sailing off into the sunset together,” or “Tell me about that time Lee Jordan became Minister of Magic,” which is technically Jezz’s story, but whatever. Hit me!

(Fandoms I’m in/have been in, for reference and in no particular order: Harry Potter, Buffy, Metallica, Guns ‘n Roses, Popslash, My Chemical Romance, Firefly, Lord of the Rings, the new BBC version of Robin Hood, (World of) Warcraft (it is too a fandom, hush), Space: Above and Beyond, assorted comic books, mostly X-Men and Cable&Deadpool, plus some Boostle, new Who, and, um, several I’m probably forgetting. And hell, I can probably tell you a non-fandom story too, if you want. Seriously, hit me!)

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

Melle: I am having some very random but intense fandom-love. Like, love for fandom at large. I do not know where this came from, but I keep wanting to write it a love letter.
Anna: DO IT!

So, yeah. Blame Canada for this:

Dear Fandom,

Hi, you probably don’t really know me, because I tend to just kind of hover around at your edges most of the time, lurking in the shadows, but after more than ten years, I figured I should actually come out and tell you how much I love you.

You’ve made my life so much better, given me so much — the ability to actually socialise, a ton of friends, language skills, EVERYTHING. I would not be the person I am today without you, so yeah. Thank you!

I hope we get at least another ten years, me in the corner and you doing your awesome thing, with your porn and your smarts and your PEOPLE who are AWESOME and your community and your wank and your LITTLE FACE! :D

I am so looking forward to growing old with you, I can’t even tell you.

Lessthanthree,
Melle

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

(Note: I know Emma Goldman didn’t actually say that exactly, but that’s not gonna stop me from using it. I like the sentiment anyway.)

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think I kinda love 4-chan right now. They’ve demonstrated the organising power of the internet, and hopefully will show a whole generation that protesting and activism can be not only fun, but even damn hilarious. (In some cities, they rickrolled the Co$, people! Awesome!)

Some related links:

• Wikipedia explains 4-chan — scroll down to section 2.1 and beyond for info relevant to this whole thing.
• Wikipedia explains Project Chanology for an explanation of what went on yesterday.
• Wikinews article on yesterday’s protests.
• Photos and reports, in which, unfortunately, the words “fag” and “gay” are liberally strewn around as slurs. This would be the part of this that makes me hideously uncomfortable, yes.
• Cleo has a sampler of the above.

In conclusion: I don’t agree with everything they do or say, and again, the “fag” slurs make me not want to participate, but the effective use of the internet as an organising and focussing tool for activism? Awesome.

In conclusion:

[ETA] Via Cleo: deathboy says:

I can’t remember the source, but there’s some sci-fi story I’ve read where the conclusion reads along the lines of “They could withstand the fiercest of our weapons, they could defeat us intellectually, but in the end, I think they died of sheer culture shock” - the looks on the faces of the scientologists when faced with a crowd in which a lone voice shouts:

“I HEAR TOM CRUISE HATES MUDKIPS!”

(all) “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

… how do you fight that?

How do you, ideologically speaking, defeat a crowd that is enthusiastically demanding that you “DO A BARREL ROLL! DO A BARREL ROLL!!” ?

Which is sort of what I was trying to get at, really. It needs balancing with actually getting one’s message across, but announcing you’re gonna protest for a specific reason will make it clear to the target/audience what they’re there for, and every protest I’ve been to has had its share of cryptic signs — the message still came through. Sure, the rickrolling and the Fresh Prince rap will confuse people, but they’ll be more likely to come and ask if thge protesters are obviously having fun. (And no, I don’t get the Fresh Prince thing either. Huh?) [/ETA]

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

Dear Frank Iero,

Please cease and desist being a FUCKING HOT LESBIAN, you fucker, and UNHAND MAH GAY!

Distressedly yours,
Melle

(Seriously, that haircut couldn’t be any dykier if it put on a strap-on and fucked your girlfriend. Frank is pretty much my Ideal of Hotness in that picture and I WANT HIM TO STOOOOP! D: )

(Oh great, just when I could’ve really used my “inappropriate lusting” tag, I’ve gone and deleted it.)

(Oh hey, while I’m up, anyone want to point me towards a good starting point for finding Ray Toro and/or Bob Bryar-centric picspam and/or fic?)

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

I should probably find a more constructive outlet for my history geek tendencies, because right now I keep thinking someone ought to make a website or a wiki about the cultural history of the internet and/or fandom so I can go and get all nostalgic about it. Something like this, only more so, and mentioning things like “Remember when Hotmail wasn’t yet owned by Microsoft?” and stuff like that.

… I kinda can’t wait to be old and crab at the Kids These Days about how I remember an internet before LOLCats and say things like “Now, back in the days when YahooGroups was still eGroups, but after OneList …” I have issues, I know.

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

My life feels all disorganised and argh. This is, I suspect, in large part because my flat is an unholy mess. I’ve been meaning to clean this weekend, but when I switched on the boiler yesterday, it quickly became apparent that there was something wrong. Normally, even in the coldest dead of winter, it takes an hour, max, to heat the water up to near-boiling. This time? Not so much. Three hours later, it was still tepid at best — warm enough that I can tell it’s doing something, too cold to take a shower with or do the dishes. And so i should call my landlady, except I need to clean first, before she comes out, because I can’t let her see the flat like this. O HELLO CATCH-22! *headdesk*

(Okay, I’ve been clearing up at least, and dusting and stuff, and will do the dishes by boiling water in the kettle, but it’s gonna take a while, and I’ve not been able to take a shower in two days now. I normally shower twice a day, so now I feel icky like whoa.)

In happier news, Gerard Way needs to be my secret gay boyfriend. (Starting at the 0:57 mark.) No, seriously. (Around the 1:50 mark especially.)

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

• LOL80’s: A Picture Thread
  (tags: funny 80s)
• LOLRockers?
  (tags: funny lolrockers)
• the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats - a photoset on Flickr
  (tags: lolcats funny)

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

Small housekeeping note: I’m no longer posting writing-related posts to mounthelicon, nor crafts-related posts to craftybrain, because I want to uniformise (shaddup, it is too a word) the “mirrors” at all four (… for now, until GJ goes down completely) LJ-clones.

Neil Gaiman is made of awesome:

When I’m not writing the novel I feel guilty. And even though blogworthy things turn up (I could write about the thaw right now, and the sunshine and the bees; three days ago a really funny entry on what to do when your assistant hands you twenty pounds of whole and uncut cow liver for your dog that she was given at the local meat packing plant didn’t get written, and yesterday I composed an entire thing in my head I didn’t write down about Why The People in Torchwood Season One Are All Too Stupid To Live — including the astonishingly puzzling incident where someone in 1941 has written something down on paper with black ink (a medium that will last legibly for centuries if kept out of the sun), and, unaccountably worried that ink on paper will fade and become unreadable in time, first she takes a prototype Polaroid photo of it, and then writes some of it in blood and puts it in a coffee can in a damp cellar, because these media will still be readable seventy years later. Why she didn’t make a model of it out of chocolate as well, I will never know.)

Dear Mr Gaiman: Please be my BFF and come for a sleepover with Anna and I? We’ll paint our toenails and braid each other’s hair and talk about boys! It’ll be ace!

In unrelated news, I should stop looking at baby!Metallica (and baby!GnR) pictures. I have ceased believing these people were born male. I sorry, but there’s long hair, and then there’s Farrah Fawcett hair, and baby!Lars has the latter. Also, I now have a theory that Axl Rose was raised in some weird-ass commune that shunned trousers, or something, and wasn’t introduced to the very concept of them until 1992 at least. (Thong-and-chaps, kilts, tight shorts, tights-and-red-patent-leather-codpiece — anything but trousers, apparently!)

(”Why were you looking at these pictures in the first place?” I’m having a fandom relapse, okay, shaddup. DUN JUDGE MEEE!)

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

• Morphases - More Faces
  Awesome tool for creating lifelike images of characters, etc.
  (tags: resources writing)
• McA direct
  Local yarn shop.
  (tags: knitting yarn)
• Fake LJ-User Tag Generator
  Always comes in handy.
  (tags: resources)
• Chocolate Fountains warehouse
  Online shop that sells Callebaut chocolate.
  (tags: stores)

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

My internet is being patchy, so I spent most of the weekend watching TV. I now remember why I don’t usually watch much TV. Gah.

(I was also reminded of how much I want fashion to go on a Sixties retro kick so I can rock outfits like this . I have legs to show off here, and I bloody well can’t do it in what passes for a miniskirt these days!)

So, uh, yeah, still playing catch-up on blogs and friendslists, but I will get there! I promise!

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

I went back to skip=100 and gave up — if I’ve missed anything important, smack me. (Haven’t been well since Saturday. Blech. Feeling mostly better now, though.)

I’m trying to get (back) into writing more … well, if not serious, then at least coherent stuff, and as part of that, I’m trying to post something at Feminists Don’t Bake Bread every Tuesday. Yesterday’s was actually posted early this morning, but here you go: The Cost Of Femininity.

I’m thinking of re-integrating my writing and craft journals into my main LJ. Hrm.

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

So last Saturday, my last day in Belgium^*, my mum informed me that I should “have a look through that one shelf of books” because anything I didn’t explicitly select for keeping was going to go. My brother and I went D: at her, because while neither of us care much for material possessions, we both have this sense that throwing away, or even giving away, books is Just Plain Wrong. I then went D: some more when i realised that what was on this shelf were a whole lot of children’s books.

“But. You can’t,” I said, aghast. “You can’t get rid of any of them.”

“Most of them are falling apart, or they’re stupid commercial series we never got more than half a dozen of,” she pointed out. “And there simply isn’t enough room for all these books.”

I conceded, because she did have point. The first thing one sees when one enters the house is a room full of books. It used to be the shop, long ago, and 70-80% of the walls are taken up by bookshelves, floor to ceiling. There’s more bookshelves on the upstairs landing, and a whole lot of books in boxes still. Some of these were inherited; there’s a whole shelf of truly magnificently old books that came from great-uncles on either side of the family, and most of the boxes came from my late uncle — and that’s with the majority of his books stashed at my gran’s, and with my paternal grandparents’s books mostly at my dad’s, and if you’re getting the impression that my family has book-loving genes, you’re absolutely correct^**.

So I went through the books. Some of them were easy enough to part with, like the Disney books for kiddies and similar things. Some broke my heart, but I was strong and parted with them anyway — these included a bunch of books for very young kids, which I had fond memories of but which, really, there’s a gazillion of these kinds of “Up/Under” books. Some I had to admit really were too beaten up to keep, although I still put some of those apart and made my brother decide on them, because I like making others make the hard decisions for me.

But there were some that I just couldn’t part with, because there is just no way I could ever find them again for less than an arm and a leg, and I’d want to read them to my future nieces and nephews. (The wonderful children’s books by Jac Linders, with illustrations by Lie, for example, which are so very Seventies and yet so very fabulous and yeah.) Still, I think I saved about half a dozen, and left about the same number for my brother to decide on, and I know it was necessary and for the best but I’m still sad about the ones that had to go.

Books: They’ll break your heart. :(

^* My mother’s habit of asking things at the last damn minute, often when people are about to walk out the door, is a frequent source of frustration for the rest of us. This, at least, was a relatively mild example. Sigh.
^** When my paternal grandparents died six months apart, a few years back, it took nine (sets of) children(-in-law) plus a handful of grandkids several weeks to clear out the house, mostly of books. There were books in every room, often stacked along the walls for lack of shelves to put them on, and keep in mind that this house had a room for each of the nine kids, at least one spare bedroom, a master bedroom, an office, and an attic, and there were still books stashed in various other places downstairs. If I ever get a house, this is how I will end up. I have seen my future, and it is books.

In more cheerful news, my Ravelry invite came! I can now be find there as femgeek, for those of you who’re also there. (For those of you who aren’t, and have no idea what this is about, please ignore the yarn geek in the corner. Ahem.)

I’m trying to keep riding this wave of determinedly-doing-stuff I have going and, now that my flat is largely clean and my website is revamped, and my flist is reorganised and culled, the next thing on my Internet To Do List is to cull and reorganise my bookmarks. I’m removing comics I don’t really read anymore, and blogs/websites that do nothing but annoy me anymore. This is where you come in.

This is your chance to pimp links at me, although I’m going to be slightly picky.

Comics:

• Gaming comics preferred, especially WoW-related ones.
• Alternatively, amusingly recognisable comics about Tech Support and/or call centres.
• Alternatively alternatively, historical stuff, boytouchig a bonus.
• I’m … not overly fond of a lot of anime-style drawings.

Blogs:

• I’m especially looking for feminist and feministy blogs, but also knitting/crafts blogs, or anything else interesting.
• Of the feminist stuff, I’d prefer WoC, older (”") women, disabled women, and (gender)queer/trans blogs.
• No radfems. I’m serious. (Too much exposure to the transphobia in radfem circles this past year, can’t stomach it at all anymore, even for posts I might have liked or even loved, sorry.)

Other:

• Oh, hell. Hit me. :D
• Oh, wait, any website with good info about he Renaissance and/or the history of knitting would especially be welcome.

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

The thing about DMs is, because they last so damn long, some time between new pairs, I always forgot how painful it is to break in a new pair. Owie. :(

Work is busy. I’m nevertheless busy playing pretty flash-based games. My favourites are Winterbells (current high score: 2,845,220) and Bubble Bees (Current high score: 9,000-odd). Warning: do not click on that link if you don’t have at least an hour to lose.

Meme time! From Munchkinott:

• Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your current favorite song, your favorite kind of sandwich, or maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
• I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
• Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
• When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.

Answers behind the cut.

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

Happy New Year’s! Mags got me dunk. Or at least her party did. I’m going to be so emarassed in the morning. And missing my tupperware. Um. I mean. HI! :D

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

Happy New year’s! Mas got me dunk. Or at lear her party did. I’m going to be so emarassed in the morning. And missing my tupperware. Um. I mean. HI! :D

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.