thedeadlyhook: (Karate! by Beanbeans)
thedeadlyhook ([personal profile] thedeadlyhook) wrote2007-09-21 11:46 am

A World of Random

I've missed so many birthdays, it's honestly embarrassing: [livejournal.com profile] botias, [livejournal.com profile] spikes_heart, [livejournal.com profile] pukajen, [livejournal.com profile] romanyg, [livejournal.com profile] dessert_first, [livejournal.com profile] pfeifferpack, [livejournal.com profile] lillianmorgan, [livejournal.com profile] ascian3, [livejournal.com profile] rikko_oko.... Very Happy Belated Birthdays to you all, and hopes for a great year ahead.

Good Christ, I'm behind on everything. I haven't even read any of the Bring Back the Porn Day entries on InsaneJournal. Something's clearly wrong with the world. Or I've just been too busy. Or both. Sigh...

[livejournal.com profile] coyote_william has a poll about the Slayer activiation spell: good idea or bad, morally speaking? (Not just good/bad in terms of plot device, in other words.) I've contributed to this thread a lot; I have big honking problems with "Chosen" which I apparently still need to get off my chest. Isn't it amazing how some things will nearly always draw you back into the same damn conversations?

Fic rec: We Who Are About to Die, a Spike & Anya conversation on the night before the battle of "Chosen." Really like this one, the knowing quality of it. Sublime.



Public Service Posters of the 1920s - kids, don't play on train tracks! Warning: some of the comments recount personal memories of death by train.

A little book of fish facts. Aww, cod that play safely with other cod!

The Happy Feminist reminisces about the bad, old days of housewifery as unpaid labor, taken for granted. Yes, feminism made a difference.

[livejournal.com profile] thisficklemob originally linked to this one: The Shock Doctrine, the behind-the-scenes philosophy that's apparently been running our lives for the past few decades. And this link, from [livejournal.com profile] germaine_pet, on the new book The Terror Presidency. Yikes. Answers to so many questions.

I made a note back on Labor Day, when the SciFi Channel was running a Twilight Zone-a-thon, that the entertainment I grew up on, especially filmed works and TV series from the postwar era, were far more about processing the effects of that war - Hitler, et al - than I'd ever realized. It wasn't exactly cloaked, either, just that it now looks sort of... exotic from our viewpoint, fifty years down the road. "Eye of the Beholder," the one with The Beverly Hillbillies' Ellie May Clampett playing a beautiful "ugly duckling" in a racially pure world of piglike deformities? That's a story about Hitler's eugenics program in scifi clothing - when our heroine runs down a hospital corridor in the aftermath of her final, unsuccessful attempt at plastic surgery, we see a dictator on a TV screen ranting about conformity, and how there must be only ONE standard. At the end of the episode, she's taken away to a camp to live "among your own kind." Dude. The final episode of the marathon, "The Obsolete Man," featured an even more obvious Hitler, a "Chancellor" figure eventually labeled "obsolete" by his own state, clearing the field for Rod Serling to opine that the "state" itself is also obsolete, as is any form of government that refuses to acknowledge the dignity of individual humans.

Don't I wish.

A planet where business rules apply to the Internets? Wouldn't that be something.

I also watched a Dirty Jobs-a-thon, during which I saw a commerical for an item that's being called a "pancake puffs" pan. It's really traditional pan for making Danish aebleskivers, little pancake balls which are closest in form to Japanese takoyaki, or octopus puffs. I've known this since childhood, thanks to my hometown's local summer festival, and the several stands that served this food item, tossed poppin'-fresh hot into a paper bag into which you'd ladle a few spoonfuls of powdered or brown sugar. And that's how you'd eat them, from the bag, scooping up a bit of sugar with each doughy bite. Gah, now I'm hunnnngry.

A long article-slash-review on We Love Katamari. I love the meandering train of thought, and the way it ends up analyzing the game experience in social terms. (The bit about wandering the empty world, lonely and bereft, without anything left to roll up, is particularly apt.)

Silly memeage: I did the Ollivander's wand test and ended up with a 13-inch olive-branch wand with a Kelpie hair. No idea what this signifies in the Potterverse. Perhaps I'm a wicked witch at heart. The more Potter-savvy are encouraged to enlighten me.

Motivational Posters with Sean of the Dead quotes. I think my favorite is the shot of Angel, doing his "whaaaa--?" look, "like a drunk, who's lost a bet." Hee.

I will admit to laughing hard when I read Stargate Atantis vs. BtVS/AtS. They've more in common than I ever realized! And now I have this strange craving for Rodney/Spike fic.

Firt [livejournal.com profile] crackers4jenn posted a clip from the As You Were dailies and then [livejournal.com profile] molly_may weighed in with more from As You Were plus Wrecked. I haven't watched a lot of the dailies before. OMG, those are some lovely facial expressions. I do miss my Spuffy. Sigh...

I signed up for [livejournal.com profile] ruuger's Buffy is the Hero, Dammit! ficathon. Because I am insane, and don't have enough WIPs to work on. And I signed up for [livejournal.com profile] seraphcelene's Fic Meta-a-Thon too. Because I am INSANE. Clearly.

But on that note:

[Poll #1059076]

[identity profile] spikes_heart.livejournal.com 2007-09-21 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooooh, thank you sweetie! Belated wishes extend the happy feelings that much longer than a single day. *grins* You made me smile today.

[identity profile] thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com 2007-09-21 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm glad I could bring a smile to your face, even if I am hopelessly late! (sings you the birthday song)
ext_7259: (Default)

[identity profile] moscow-watcher.livejournal.com 2007-09-21 07:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I voted for DVD comments - writer's choices always fascinate me.

[identity profile] thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com 2007-09-21 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)
The early results would seem to favor commentary. Which suits me - my only worry is having enough interesting things to say about any given story. I've read some really interesting writer's commentaries, and compared to those, my process is probably horribly mundane.

[identity profile] monkey-junkey.livejournal.com 2007-09-21 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I had to click ticky box! It was just too tempting!

[identity profile] thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com 2007-09-21 07:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Heh heh, I tempt you with my ticky box!!
herself_nyc: (Default)

[personal profile] herself_nyc 2007-09-22 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
Hi hi hi!

I chose thinky thoughts but a commentary would be good too. I pick “Dirty Back Road” but really any ….

[identity profile] thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com 2007-09-22 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
Hey hey!

Thanks for the input! So far, "Dirty Back Road" is looking like the front-runner for commentary.
herself_nyc: (vamp!Xander by misstress_tink)

[personal profile] herself_nyc 2007-09-22 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
I sense that's what you REALLY want to do ....

[identity profile] thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com 2007-09-22 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
I'm actually easy; that's why I did the poll. Given my druthers, I'd probably hammer on about something nobody was interested in.

[identity profile] kassto.livejournal.com 2007-09-22 08:58 am (UTC)(link)
I'm all for the thinky-thoughts, as you do them so well. I've always thought that YOU should be in academia, to raise the tone and all that.

[identity profile] thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com 2007-09-23 05:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Ha! Thank you. Believe me, I've thought about it - I think I'd really enjoy collegiate life now if I were able to go back, unlike when I was originally there. Seriously, I can't help but think that college should be done in two stages - the part where you get out of your parents' house and learn to live on your own when you're young, and then a later return once you've lived enough to have a clue as to what you want to do.

[identity profile] kassto.livejournal.com 2007-09-29 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
the part where you get out of your parents' house and learn to live on your own when you're young,

But there seems to be a whole generation of kids these days that never leave home. It's all too comfy there. It weren't like that in my day...

:: shakes gnarled old fist ::

[identity profile] evilawyer.livejournal.com 2007-09-23 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I stopped in to see if you had anything to say about this glorious rainy weekend (although it hasn't rained here since yesterday --- when I was trying to haul my new 8' long, 250 lb conference room table top into the conference from the back patio before it the rain turned it to mushy, swelled Velveeta-wood), and find, to my great surprise, that you have recced my fic! Thank you very much!

I'm glad to see the 9th Circuit's decision re: notice before ISP can change ToS. I wonder how the rest of the federal circuits feel about it, though. The 9th Circuit tends to be a little out there on its own, going farther to protect consumers and construing business transactions in a liberal light. Good to see, though.