Being a m/m slasher, I devote a lot of words (and icons) to the boys. So, in the interests of equal time, here are icons of some of the female characters, major and minor, who have made me laugh, cry, cheer, or all of the above.

( cut for excessive icon therapy )

If any of these tickle your fancy, please help yourselves. :)

Current Location: sofa of icon madness
Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Miss Marple

For I need my icon therapy, and shall inflict it upon my long-suffering flist. :)





Help yourselves!

Current Location: sofa of ouch
Current Mood: sore

the color PINK!






Help yourselves!

Current Location: sofa of icon madness
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: NCIS

My celebrations of the Fourth have always been a conflicted business. I love the principles upon which my nation was founded. I greatly admire many of her accomplishments, and many of her citizens. But some of the actions of my country, both past and present, frankly horrify me.

America is by no means alone in this -- there is no nation on this planet that does not have some atrocity that can be laid at her door. But America is perhaps unique in the magnitude of her hubris. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating: any nation founded on the practice of slavery and genocide should walk among its fellow nations with just a tad more humility.

When I was a teenager (late 60s, early 70s) one of the Philadelphia radio stations had a tradition of playing Buffy Sainte-Marie's My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying every Fourth of July. The DJ thought it was a healthy counter-balance to all the flag-waving, and I think so, too.

Take care, all.

Current Location: sofa of thinky
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: NCIS

A few days before Con.txt, I found a folder with unanswered email in it -- feedback for my stories. Some of these are from JANUARY. Gah. There was a time when I answered my mail within 24 hours. I'm such a damn screw-up. My apologies to anyone here who emailed me and didn't receive an answer. I really do appreciate the time and effort required to send feedback. I'm going to answer these, even if it is six months too late.

I can haz new brain now? *sigh*

Current Location: home
Current Mood: embarrassed
Current Music: Ghosthunters

Hammond of Texas has fallen in battle.

Don S. Davis passes away.

Much, much too young.

Current Mood: sad

Help yourselves. :)

Current Location: sofa of sleepy
Current Mood: tired

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE. 3a) Strikethrough the books you HATE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.


1 Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Read the first one, the writing put me off, and thereby hangs a tale...)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis -- (Um, see #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Don't really hate any of the ones I've read, although I did want to tear my eyes out during several interminable passages of Moby Dick. And like my kindred spirit sanj, I intend to read everything. :)

Current Location: sofa of sleepy
Current Mood: sleepy

On a whim, I did a search on the Yokohama Maru, the ship my great-grandparents took from Seattle to Yokohama on their way to Korea in 1917. To my surprise, I actually found her here, lying on the bottom near Papua New Guinea.

My great-grandmother Helen didn't think much of sailing on her:

Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917

If you hear of anyone that expects to come to the Orient, for Heaven's sake don't let them come on the Yokohama Maru, or any of the Marus sailing from Seattle. It is a very small boat, smaller than the boat we went to Providence on last summer. We are heavily freighted with contraband. The wireless is censored. We cannot send out our position nor give nor receive any news. The wireless operator plays the flute all day long. We have an Imperial Post Office in the hold.

The perils of traveling in wartime. They were on their way to Japanese-occupied Korea, and Helen was unable to send uncensored news home for the next two years. My great-grandfather had decided to take a position as a pharmacist in the Severance Hospital in Seoul, working under Dr. Oliver Avison, who I also was surprised to find on the net.

I've been meaning to transcribe Helen's letters home for years. Yet another project dangling...

Current Location: sofa of thinky
Current Mood: anxious

From many peoples: When you see the meme, quote something from Doctor Who:

Doctor: Why did you bring me here?

Master: As a scapegoat for the killing of the President! Who else but you, Doctor? So despicably good. So insufferably compassionate!

Ep title, ep title! I'm blocking on ep title! Urgh. Well, it's only been twenty years since I've seen it. But a line like that sticks in your head. Nobody chewed the scenery like classic!Master. *g*

ETA: The ep is The Deadly Assassin -- thank you, ellen_fremedon! :D

Current Location: work
Current Mood: amused