thedeadlyhook

I've missed so many birthdays while generally AWOL. August is a big birthday month! I hope Very Happy Birthdays were had by pukajen, botias, sweet_ali, estepheia, boschette, rainkatt, and tepintzin, and Very Happy Birthdays in Advance to mere_ubu, romanyg, and dessert_first.

Still blocked on fic, in that way of feeling like you were stupid to ever have thought you could write, but oh well. I know these things tend to be temporary, but that doesn't make them fun.

In the meantime, I amused myself with that "First Lines" meme I've seen going around. ( Take the first lines of the last twenty stories you're written. See if there are any patterns ) [ETA: I've belatedly realized I didn't exactly follow the rules of this meme, as I didn't choose twenty and didn't put them in any particular order. Shrug.] Suffice to say that my results reflect the sort of patterns I suspect this meme was designed to uncover. : )

In other news, film oddities recently seen by myself and toysdream include Liquid Sky, which I'd remembered reading a review of back in the '80s when it first came out and thought it sounded interesting (a fair assessment, although "weird," "slow," and "garish" would also qualify, without even getting into the musical score - some trippy monologues, though) and Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare starring Jon-Mikl Thor, a heavy-metal act who apparently had career in B-Films that I'd somehow missed. Not quite as entertaining as Horror, perhaps, for lack of hilarious devil-goat shots, but the demonic finger-puppets almost made up for the lack.

On the roster for tonight, Zacharaiah, which promises to be a "psychedelic trip through the Wild West." And yes, we've been raiding the Cult shelf at our local video den, why do you ask?

Coming Soon: A Personal Top Ten List of Movie Musicals. It's a genre primed for a comeback, I swear.

A Belated Very Happy Birthday to avrelia!!


It never fails: I can have little or nothing on my social and professional calendar for months, and then suddenly, it all goes batshit at once. The good news is, I have a new job, starting today. Plus a fair amount of freelance coming in. The bad news is, it's messing with my fic writing. And just when it was starting to go well, after a long dry spell! (bangs head)

I managed to get the first chapter of my seasonal_spuffy fic, Action Figures and Fashion Dolls, posted on time, but due to unforseen insane busyness, there will be a slight delay before I can get the next part up. My apologies!

A Belated Very Happy Birthday to spuffyduds!!!

Sorry for being a day late- I'm really pretty bad at this, aren't I? So great to meet you this year in SF, and my best wishes to you and fam!

It's herself_nyc's birthday! A lovely lady who I've only recently gotten to meet and to know, even though we've been babbling about Spike and Buffy, and the smut that they get up to, for - oh, god, years now. The happiest of days to you, and here comes the scrolling thing:

A Very Happy Birthday to herself_nyc!!

Your present will be arriving a weensy bit late, though, hun. I was stupid enough to try something handmade, so... (headdesk) Still working on it.

A Very Happy Birthday to beanbeans!!

The final word is in on Toys's computer - DOA. I have run of the laptop for a few hours because he's in class right now, but otherwise I'll probably be pretty absent here on LJ until we get some kind of solution. It goes without saying that the mood in our household is a bit grim. Toys is practically chewed up with stress. I'm making his favorite dinner tonight, but that's about all I can do.

But my woes are tiny - the world feels a particularly sad and nasty place right now, and I can only hope for the air to change soon. Enough, please, I think we've all had enough. Enough posturing, enough tough-guy bullshit, enough guns going off. Enough of people who think they have to prove something. As if learning to live in harmony with your neighbors wasn't challenge enough.

I've been signing a lot of petitions lately; I urge everyone to do the same. There is no tomorrow until we make it happen.

( A change of pace: things making me smile right now )

My best thoughts go out to you all. I'm going to try to get some writing done today while I can.

Okay, so either I am stupid, or LJ has made it harder to find out when people's birthdays are. It was about the only thing I liked about that "My LJ" page, that it had a quick list for b-days. So unless I figure out this new damn system, I'm probably doomed to be eternally clueless and behind.

That said...

A Belated Very Happy Birthday to irfikos and azdak!!!

In other news, it's been one of those weeks in which I keep stumbling across fascinating conversations at the precise moments when I have the least amount of energy for talking. I'm going to have to get in the habit of just linking when this happens, because at least then I'll remember what smart people got up to while I was out of commission feeling stupid.

rahirah had a great post about character positioning - alpha/beta, dom/sub, etc. - and there's some great followup in the comments about fanfic's tendencies toward portraying 'ships along those lines, whether the canon (when applicable) supports it or not. Food for thought there about what kind of power dynamics writers and readers are drawn to, or respond to.

I have to admit here I wasn't originally intending to read the Buffy Season 8 comic (insert belly laugh here about how "canon" I consider these comics), but Toys wanted to see it, so we've checked out the first two issues, and I have been enjoying talking about it through various posts on my flist, so at least I've gotten that much out of it. molly_may has said most of what I wanted to say about issue 2 here, although I'll add a couple more cents in easy bullet form: ( Spoilers for Buffy Season 8 Comic Through Issue 2 )