Brain Flotsam V2.007

Had a lot of stuff going on this week.  It's just been terribly busy, and I haven't slept well.
Thought about going to the memorial concert tonight, but wasn't up for it.  Spent the whole day reading various bizarre social networking posts about where people were in 2001. There was a hashtag for it, for goodness sakes. Bizarre, and yet I suppose completely human.
I doubt I'll ever forget, but the memory seems to change with each telling. And more than the day itself, the days and weeks immediately after stay in my mind. It was a hard time, but one that has faded with the passing of years so that its immediacy is lessened but certain indelible images and feelings remain, worn into the psyche beside all the rest of a life's traumas.

Hm, I seem to have gone a bit introspective despite my effort to avoid same this year.

I've finished two actual novels this week, though, which was great.  And they were both awesome in totally different ways.  Lavinia by Ursula K LeGuin, and The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop.

Now I'm really tired and looking forward to a fun weekend, so I'd best get to bed and try to actually sleep.

• my best friend really really really wants me to read Twilight.  sigh. I probably should read it just so I'll have a point of conversation with my younger cousins, who aren't readers but have apparently all finished the series.
  
• she also spent some time discussing the ways that she thought my characterization of Draco Malfoy in Far Away as Moonshine echoed that of Michael Corleone in The Godfather series.
  
• and we spent our lunch talking racebending and white-washing in film, something she's been aware of and talking about for longer than I.
  
• good times, despite the sparkly vampire complication.

• Friday evening I actually went out. Yes, really. Had dinner and then drinks with friends. I visited a new bar I'd never been to, and had some lovely Scotch.
  
• The lightning on Friday was apocalyptic.  Made me wish I had a camera with instant shutter speed, to capture it.
  
• Saturday morning at the gas station, a lady saw my "I'm blogging this" t-shirt and said, "Hey, can I ask you about blogging?"  So we ended up having a conversation about social media while my tank filled. Bizarre.
  
• Spent Saturday evening at my aunt's house. We had dinner and conversation and played two rounds of Scrabble.  Fun times.
  
• Today Mom and I made a HUGE dent in my cleaning. We moved the sewing cabinet, and put away almost all the books, although actually really they're all thrown willy-nilly onto shelves, not actually organized.  It'll take me weeks to get them organized.
  
• I hung two more pictures on the walls, too.
  
• Baking soda really is a miracle cleaner.
  

• I have two more bigbang arts to do, and then a fest to illustrate before Snupin Santa hits.
  
• I'm working on a concept for a series of fairy tale illustrations in Prismacolor and ink, for my Advanced Visual Arts studio class this semester.
  

A Joyous Imbolc to all - may good things grow from here.

I fail at weekend productivity, mostly.  Although with the assistance of Fabric-Stash Enabler Mom, I did acquire some smokin' awesome additions to my stash (and the things I actually needed for my current project) during a trek through Houston's southeastern neighborhood fabric stores.  We should learn that in most cases, we will find fun novelty fabrics at the chains, but for quality color/value cottons, going directly to The Painted Pony would save some time and money.  ;)
The only thing we didn't find was the Hoffman Challenge fabric. It's on some of the online retailers, but not yet in stores around here. We'll wait a bit and check back.

We also went to the uber-awesome catfish joint and scored a party platter overflowing with hushpuppies. WIN.

I did not actually get the fabric washed, although that's probably good as now it has bonus cat hair to wash off, too. Apparently my quilting table is Zephyr's new favorite nap spot.

Suffered through the Sunday blahs and Sunday night insomnia, which really made for a grand morning today.  Ugh.  Did manage to get my iTunes playlists transferred to Sofia at last, and got rid of most of the repetitive entries in the Library. Also acquired hotel accomodations for both ApolloCon and WorldCon. w00t!

Did some art, including laying in colors for the commission portrait for llnm. Finally. It'll take several more color layers to get it done, and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the chosen palette, but the nice thing about digital is that I have a great amount of control over individual colors. Did not do any writing.  Did a lot of reading, both of the fanfic and regular variety. I finished Skulduggery Pleasant (hey! It has a sequel!) and have gotten firmly addicted to The Stepsister Scheme.

Lalala. I think that was it. I got the feeling there was some kind of nation-wide sports event going on, but it never really got onto my radar. I will probably catch up on the cool movie trailers over the course of the next few days.

OMG, libba_bray posted about this and I WANT ONE!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The awesomeness knows no bounds - especially note the info about the illustrations. w00t!

Mom and I have some last-minute errands to run before I skip town tomorrow.  (I scheduled another crack-of-dawn flight. Egads.)
We're going to the art supply. Yay!  I will be there more often soon.  One of my Yule gifts to myself was a Watercolor class at the Art League.  w00t! 
I am so excited. It starts my first week back in town. I am really looking forward to getting into more media on paper, and perhaps combining the watercolors with the pencils.  I had great success with watercolor pencils on my travels during high school.  My Poland journal is full of great art. I need to get back to that.

This afternoon the kids promised they'd be around to play games, so yay. Hopefully we can get in some railroad-building, some gloomy family wrangling, and some volcano sacrificing.  w00t! Mom and I have played a few games in the course of our holiday celebrations (which included reading the comics, doing the crossword, baking cookies, and reading aloud to each other from The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation and The Quotable Atheist, which I gave to Mom for Christmas. Yes, irony, I know.) but we haven't had everybody together yet.

Then I have three pieces of digital art to finish and send before I leave town, and I must pack. I am bringing some art with me to work on, already in progress, and will have to decide about the rest of it. I am going to freeze my butt off!  Where did I leave my tights? And my boots? At least I have a new scarf.

Ok, must run. Happy Boxing Day/First Day of Christmas, people!

Fantasy Magazine » “The Chosen One” Vs. The One Who Chooses:

“The Chosen One” is a very specific trope in F/SF. Whether by a seer, some higher power or force, or simply because of their particular bloodline, characters are chosen for some great destiny that often includes a fight between the forces of good and evil. A prime example of this is Harry Potter from the very popular series by J.K. Rowling.

A re-post from October, when I was confronted with some interesting comments on the issue of fan entitlement and authorial privilege in the fan-book relationship.

reading in a connected world:

But does having such immediate and pseudo-intimate access to an author cause a shift in the way I read their books? Can knowing details of the book's long writing process alter the essential interpretation of the words on the page? Do authorial comments at readings or in blogs trump the basic text, or merely augment the reader/fan experience?

I may have more to say on this if it gets any discussion... It's mostly questions now.

I haven't kept up with this, given current American politics, but this popped up on my Google Reader and it's very interesting, from a Columbia Law School professor.

J.K. Rowling should lose her copyright lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon. - By Tim Wu - Slate Magazine:

In IM with a friend today, all my motives are belong to you:

zephre: that's the basis of most of my AUs. redeem the Malfoys, and Snape if possible; break up Harry & Ginny if I can; and give everybody therapy.

and by 'redeem' I don't mean let them be good-ish guys in the end, JKR did that already.  I mean make the characters worthwhile in my own mind, instead of reducing them to caricature type as I feel was done in DH.

Ok, comments to an earlier LJ post have made me think about the issue of reading books in this connected world. I have dozens of authors and editors in my Google Reader feed. Some authors I found because I liked their work and now read their blogs; others I liked their blogs and then picked up their books.
But does having such immediate and pseudo-intimate access to an author cause a shift in the way I read their books? Can knowing details of the book's long writing process alter the essential interpretation of the words on the page? Do authorial comments at readings or in blogs trump the basic text, or merely augment the reader/fan experience?

Maybe this runs into the discussion another blogger was having about spoilers. Does it matter that one knows the book's ending, or the author's intentions, or the author's personal beliefs about some side issue not-appearing-in-this-book, when the real experience of the book is the words on the published page?
How does knowing the author's beliefs and experiences color one's buying habits? I know I have bought certain books to support authors I respected, even if the subject was not interesting to me. Likewise I have not bought books from authors to whom I did not want to give the tacit support my purchase would have been. Thank goodness for the public library. Is that a good thing in the long run? Does knowing that the author of a book you loved is actually a person you intensely dislike somehow diminish the book itself? Or the art, or the music, or the architecture, or whatever creative expression it may be.

Where do the boundaries between the creative offering and the creator of the offering stand firm, and where do they crumble? As the web diminishes personal privacy boundaries and creates a culture of information saturation, is the idea of judging a book on the book alone obsolete? Reviewers hypothesize authorial motivation and intention for classic literature all the time. Is this inundation of actual records of intention and motivation a limiting factor, or another place from which to jump? Should it matter?