Brain Flotsam V2.007

I have this unfinished WIP that was really close to my heart - and still is, in its way, and I'm wondering now whether or not to finish it.  It's a one-shot featuring Harry and  Luna, in my Far Away as Moonshine ''verse, which I love to pieces despite the extreme rarepair-ness of it.  :P

I also have a bunch of prompts to fulfill for my now-defunct but still inspiring table on Luna.
Haven't been feeling the writing bug lately, but now that my ApolloCon stress is mostly done for the year, and I'm gearing up for Azkatraz, HP is back on the brain. (And I just can't do fic for Merlin yet. It took me years to work up to it in HP, maybe someday.)

To write, or not to write? Maybe I'll just keep drawing...

And oh crap, officially less than two weeks to the Con and I need to frame my art for the Gallery and Auction!
And print postcards... And test my DVD cable... And move all the pr0n off the  laptop that's traveling with me.  Yeep.

Ok, so I noted that I haven't updated here with anything of substance in over two weeks, which we all know is the internet equivalent of ten million years.
I'm still living in what I like to call cardboard chic, a house full of piles and boxes and no real organization.
True to prediction, though, I am spending a lot less time at home. Dinner and/or coffee with friends, meetings, meet-ups, a con, family events, and evening classes have all conspired to keep me far from home.
And I'm going out of town for a week starting next Tuesday. I'll be in the New York metro area, attending the Tarot Reader's Studio as well as hanging out with my beloved friends in the vicinity (and some coming in to town from afar, including Australia! Wow!).
That said, I expect to be spending more time at home in May. I have quilts to make and paintings to paint, for one thing. Plus a lot of tarot cards and still some fan exchanges to finish.  Plus the three Big Bangs I decided to sign up for. Mmm, fun. I also have books to unpack and an apartment to arrange. I also plan to acquire an actual TV. No, really! I'm going to set it up and watch it and everything. Probably.

That plus the whole Summer of Cons (ApolloCon, Azkatraz, Anticipation - I sense a theme here.)  should keep me busy.

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!

Post #1:
Here are the caveats:
I don't tend to watch TV, so I have seen neither the show nor any clips.
The web site video doesn't work if you're logging in outside the UK, so all I had to go on were the character descriptions and stills. 

Transcript of chat below:
( a plenitude of snark and a lack of saxony goodness, or evilness as the case may be )

Post #2:
I have now seen the first episode of the BBC's Merlin.
Here is my running commentary.  bwahahaha.

( snark and hilarity )

Oh, interwebs, I love you! I'm going to watch the whole show now!
Except not right this minute because it's time to sleep.

January is a crunch time at work, and I have been home only a couple of hours (awake anyhow) for the last few days. Next week looks like more of the same. It's CRAZY busy at the office and I have tons of club meetings and an evening art class and I just haven't had a space to breathe since I got back from Philadelphia.

I am thinking that there are fests signing up that I am missing...
And I could do a Year in Art post...
And I think reveals have gone up that I missed... (will have to catch up this weekend for thank-yous and such)

The only thing I've managed to do fandom-wise is my clunky Happy Birthday sketch for Snape, which I will post when I get back to Ginevra, I hope. Sofia is a mighty little machine, but she doesn't keep any art.

What am I forgetting? 
Don't you hate that feeling?
And seriously, I have this Godzilla quilt practically designed in my head, but I haven't had the chance to get out my fabric yet. It's all in a basket on my desk! Curses! Where is my Time-Turner?

Ok, lunch is over. Time to be crunched by the Jaws of Industry.
I hope this settles down by February.

Things I have done that are fun:

- went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still with my dad. We snarked. And enjoyed ourselves. And snarked. It was good.
- played two rounds of The Downfall of Pompeii with my mom. w00t! Sacrifice them to the volcano! Muahahahaha!
- made cinnamon pecans, watched Donna bake while entertaining the little one, played with Lando, danced Lando around the kitchen, introduced Lando to Sandra Boynton's brilliant Hippos Go Berserk! counting board book, and ate yummy festive holiday pound cake (which isn't fruitcake. really).
- watched A Muppet Family Christmas  and A Muppet Christmas Carol with Donna and Lando and, later, Jon.

also done:
- laundry. lots of it.
- moved furniture, re-arranged my room, sorted books, sorted more books, including antiques, moved boxes of toys, and helped mom hook up her computer to the network printer.

coming soon:
- baking cookies! (maybe.)
- playing more games with the family.
- big extended family Christmas meal and game playing.
- making art.
- sewing.
- moving all the boxes to make space for the new craft table.
- packing for Philadelphia (what do you mean it might snow in December? Where did I put my boots?)

I have been obsessively rereading A.J. Hall's Lust Over Pendle universe for the last couple of months.  I have a very few other sources for the Draco/Neville pairing, but it's really my only reliable source for finished stories at the moment.
Anybody know another source to feed the random obsession?  Like Snape, Draco is a character I can pair with many people depending on the situation and characterization, and who is writing.

Also, today I created a wholly awful and traumatic scene from the Far Away as Moonshine universe in my head while driving, and I am reluctant to actually carry it through to print. Nobody dies, although it's a very close thing, but it puts Draco through such an emotional wringer that it hurts me to relive it. I'm sure the other authors on my list know of what I speak.
Maybe I'll try transcribing it later.

After yesterday's disturbing and important subject matter over at LJ, we shift now to utterly frivolous science fiction and fantasy geekitude.
Yesterday I got a package in the mail - a used VHS edition of the virtually-unknown TV pilot movie called White Dwarf.  (Apparently the only available DVD edition is a very rare and expensive Region 2 edition.)
I watched it before Rachel came on last night, and it was totally awesome, in that awful way that TV pilots are. The story is short but jam-packed with bizarre and wonderful characters, on a world that is more fantasy than science fiction for all that it's on a planet light-years from Earth where young New York doctors come to intern with the local healer.  The 31st century is kind of regressive, and the planet has the ridiculous premise that one side is always dark, the other always light. The two sides are separated by a wall, and the weather is controlled by strange alien devices floating in the sky.
The light side is a sort of Wild West frontierland, while the dark is Renaissance Faire chic. 
Anyway, it's great. I was terribly excited to finally get a decent copy (we had an ancient home recording off the TV, but it's long been lost among the collected detritus of M*A*S*H episodes and other movies stored on unlabeled or mislabeled tapes.) and it wasn't nearly as awful to sit through as I thought it would be.
It makes me wonder what a comic book writer or animator might make of the story and the world, if they were to revisit it now.

Mom said it was "black tie and tails" for dinner, and we couldn't eat until we had drawn our black tie and tails on our post-its. So we all drew something and stuck it to our shirts.
The hippo candle holder served as cake stand-in for the singing and candle-blowing portion of the evening.
(Dad's birthday is Wednesday, but he's off on a business trip tomorrow so we had dinner last night.)

So I'm officiating a wedding on Saturday and have this great green and brown ensemble to wear. I just needed shoes - here I am, tons of brown clothes and no brown shoes. Egads.
So Mom and I braved the sales and lo, if we didn't find the perfect pair of wedding shoes.

( the perfect shoes )

Uploaded by zephrene on 26 Aug 08, 12.09PM CDT.

The Wrong Flier

Ok, I know I am just a sick person but this flier made me laugh out loud as I walked to lunch in the student center today.

ROFL.

You Are Andale Mono

You are a geek, pure and simple. You spend a lot of time online. In fact, you probably love the internet more than anyone you know. You are picky about design, mostly for readability's sake. You are the type most likely to be irritated by a bad font.

People, traditional injera bread is gluten-free. It's made from teff! I <3 teff! Three cheers for teff!

And unlike the NYC restaurants where you have to call ahead, apparently my local joint serves 100% teff injera every day. Hooray!

(When next I am in NYC, though, I can call ahead to Ghenet and request gluten-free injera for the following night.)

Take it as read that I have fundamental differences of opinion with EW.  I will take the meme for what it is, and not do too much editorializing. Or adding on at the end. ;)

Now can we do one for Movies filmed before 1970? This list is woefully lacking in Cary Grant, is all I'm sayin'.

Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 Classic Movies of the past 25 years. Bold the ones you've seen, underline the ones you plan to, strike out the ones you HATE and refuse to watch ever again. I am going to add that I am italicizing the ones that I've seen part of but either don't remember fully or have never finished.

( 100 movies in a list )

This makes me want to do a list of my favorite SFF films of the same period.

The only two decent photos from ApolloCon:
Demonic Robot Toasters in the ConSuite:

The one on the left is a Cylon with a moving LED light and sound effects that say "frakkin' toaster".
The one on the right is a Demonic toaster and I forget what its sound effects were.


My new hat for Portus.

In light of the contents of this journal, I find it hilarious that I am even now listening to "The New Pornographers Radio" on Pandora.

Yes, the New Pornographers have joined Snow Patrol on my list of artists currently on eternal repeat on my mp3 player in the car. I should really get an iPod or something more sophisticated, because most of my music files are not mp3s anymore, and my poor wee Sansa doesn't believe anything but mp3s exist.

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. one weapon
2. one song blasting on the speakers
3. one famous person to fight alongside you (real or fictional)
[Random editorial moment - if you choose a real person who is deceased (like, say, Alexander the Great), does that defeat the purpose of the meme?  hahahahahah. I kill me. Ahem.]

Weapon can be real or fictional, and you can assume endless ammo if applicable. [Where's the fun in that?]

Right at the moment I'm going with:

1. a katana (did you know that a good katana blade will cut right through bone? Yeah, I thought you might.) [man, I would need stronger arms, though. do I get an upgrade on my Strength roll?]
2. Dies Irae (Sequence No 1)  from Mozart's Requiem
3. Ambassador G'kar (Babylon 5)

I thought about a flamethrower, but let's be real. When fighting with the Narn, you would need a bladed weapon. Not to mention that I'm not sure a flamethrower would stop a zombie, just make him a bit crispy.

Poll #1833 Fairy Tales
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Pick a fairy tale...

(It's possible only Lisa knows what this is about, but really it's not hard to guess. Just pick something. If you don't recognize one of the tales and care to find out about it, try Sur La Lune, my one-stop shop for fairy tale info.)

(I got this in an email at my office.)

( Things you may not have known about me... )