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Today we discovered that at some point in early December, some of our mail was delivered to the wrong address, oops. Luckily this doesn't seem to have had any significant consquences, EXCEPT that through the magic of mail carrier error, I get holiday cards in mid-January! On More Joy Day! Could there be anything more appropriate? So, enormous and heartfelt thank yous to

meimmim,

silentfire, and

talitha78! And omg

talitha78, that pin is so adorable! Thank you so much! :D

Also in honor of More Joy Day, I bring recs! Recs for vids that fill me with warm fuzzy feelings and/or make me roll around on the carpet kicking my feet and clapping like a seal! N.B. many of these are set to songs so unbearably catchy you will be earwormed within an inch of your life. I'd apologize in advance, but that's what makes them awesome! Sorted alphabetically by fandom (approximately):

( cut for length and abuse of exclamation marks )

On the glorious occasion of the anniversary of her birth,

silentfire and I went to see Sherlock Holmes.

( spoilers will spoil you )

In conclusion: A++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN

My luggage has finally caught up to me! It only took three days! I'm going to pretend that I traveled via wormhole instead of jet plane so I can blame time dilation, because that's so much cooler and less ragey than human apathy and incompetence.

And now, we meme:

Name a fandom or a fannish topic and I will share my unpopular fandom opinions on the matter. Or any opinion, because I have lots of those and don't always know which ones are unpopular or not.

Unpopular fandom opinions, ahoy! Here, I'll start: Patrick Stump? Totally overrated! THERE, I SAID IT. Okay, now you go.

❧ I'm back in Atlanta! But my luggage is still in Fort Lauderdale! Hilarious!

❧

marythefan, thank you so much for your gorgeous Chanukkah card! It was buried for a time under a mountain of everyone else's mail, but I have FOUND it, and it has brightened my evening immeasurably. ♥

❧ Had a great and only slightly weird conversation with my mom last night re: whether or not Sherlock Holmes was gay, and whether or not characters can be gay without their creators knowing it; did not mention the words slash, Star Trek, or fanfiction on the internet even once! Maybe next time.

❧ Cannot WAIT to see Sherlock Holmes.

❧ YULETIDE :D

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for the paid Dreamwidth time,

meinnim!! Please excuse me while I upload eighty-five icons. :D

Jonathan Coulton's Chiron Beta Prime: Greatest Christmas song ever?? You decide!

I'm in South Florida and have been since Tuesday. Yesterday was my dad's 70th birthday, so my brother and I flew down to help my mom throw him a party. We cooked and baked for three days, then we stuffed our faces, watched him open presents, cheered when he blew out candles, etc. Later, after the company had left and we'd emerged from our food comas, we ordered Chinese and watched I, Robot, like you do. I hope everyone had as lovely a day.

It is currently 69°F. I'm sitting on my parents' covered back patio, drinking coffee, listening to the waterfalls from my dad's koi ponds, filling in today's crossword puzzle, and reading Yuletide stories omfg. Later I'm going to eat wings and play board games with

malelia_honu and her housemate.

And then it's right back to Yuletide.

The holiday wishlist: truly one of the greatest memes fandom has ever generated. ♥

( The Rules )

( My list )

Thank you so much for the virtual snowflake cookies, stealingpennies and geeklite! :D

I have four dreamwidth invites, so if anyone reading this doesn't have an account and would like one, just drop a comment/PM/email, whatevs. They are free to good homes!

For the last few months I've been volunteering at the local adult literacy center, and I LOVE it. Back in September I went through the twelve-hour tutor training, the ultimate intention of which is usually to match you up one-on-one with a student, but as I was getting in my requisite hours of classroom observation, I found that being in the classroom was what I really loved doing. So I decided not to request a tutee, and instead I've been operating as a de facto teaching assistant (which they are always desperately in need of, as the classes have gotten relatively large, and there are students at all learning levels in attendance).

Since I've got this stupid degree in linguistics, and I'm a natural-born lecturer, the instructor has been asking me from early on to prepare lessons from week to week, which I have been enjoying, but basically winging, since I get no direction. Once she asked me to do "something with phonics", which is basically as helpful as telling me to "teach them to read". I mean, can you vague that up for me? But I have found many resources via the google, and the class title of "Basic Literacy and Spelling" has given me enough leeway to go over things like derivational morphology, the silent "e", and orthographic-phoneme mapping.

Tonight we spent the whole class carving up sentences into phrases (because dividing sentences into phrases is natural and helps increase fluency while reading), and even though I didn't mention the word "constituent" even ONCE, sometimes I thought I was going waaay over their heads, and sometimes I asked them a question that I thought had a really simple answer, but they gave me an answer that seemed UTTERLY RANDOM; but sometimes they just GOT IT, and it was AWESOME. I fucking love language, I love the English language, and even though I thought of a dozen ways to do it better as soon as I was done, tonight was a good night. I think that's all I wanted to say.

( NCIS(gay): 1.09: Random on Purpose (now with pictures!) )

So that was awesome. I'm now FOUR weeks behind on everything else though, including NCIS: Original Flavor, The Mentalist, FlashForward, Criminal Minds, Lie to Me, Castle, White Collar, and Community. I've given up on Bones and Trauma was canceled; is there anything fantastic out there that I'm missing out on?

I'm two to three weeks behind on all the other television I watch, but I'm aaaall caught up on NCIS: LA.

( Week 8: Still the gayest! )

smallbeer is asking how would you define "manpain" in a fannish context? for the ultimate purpose of creating a Fanlore entry.

Based on responses in the comments, I have made a flowchart to help us out! Click the thumbnail for the full-size version.

How To Tell If Your Pain is ~Manpain~

ETA: Now with bonus "START" node, title, and attribution! Also more right angles! Oh, hindsight. Is there nothing you can't make obvious??

The good news: I'm one week into the hundred push ups training program and well on my way to having TRICEPS OF STEEL. *flexes*

The bad news: Pretty much everything else! This is why I watch TV.

I've only seen a couple of episodes of Castle, and so far I'm ambivalent about it, but I am tickled to death that he was issued a bulletproof vest that says WRITER in place of the usual POLICE or FBI. Sensible! but also hilarious! Obviously the rest of the stable of quirky law-enforcement adjuncts need similarly custom-emblazoned Kevlar. Shawn and Gus's would say PSYCHIC!! (sic) and MAGIC HEAD, respectively; Charlie's would say I DO MATH; Bones would request that hers say FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST, but Booth would intercept it and change it to SQUINT. I'm not sure what Cal Lightman's would say, but Neal Caffrey's could read either CON ARTIST or PROP. OF SPECIAL AGENT PETER BURKE; and Patrick Jane's would say BATSHIT INSANE. But of course he wouldn't wear it.

I get the impression that more and more people are tuning in to NCIS: LA, hooray!

You may or may not have heard about this show called NCIS: LA? and you may or may not have positive or negative associations with the parent show from which it was spun off, I don't know; and maybe you've overdosed on law enforcement procedurals, or maybe you've never forgiven Chris O'Donnell for Batman & Robin; but here is what you need to know about this show: Chris O'Donnell is a Dickensian orphan, LL Cool J is a former Navy SEAL who folds origami cranes on stakeouts and spontaneously quotes Spock, and they are terribly, terribly gay for each other. There is banter, there are jokes about being married, there are long, meaningful looks, there is the immortal line "I COMPLETE YOU", and a declaration of love. LL Cool J has committed to his acting decision to always look at Chris O'Donnell with hearts in his eyes, it's AMAZING.

Also Linda Hunt is a ninja.

The plots are so ridiculous and predictable and riddled with holes that I've just started imagining them as MacGuffins to the show's real objective: the whumping of G Callen. G's manpain is not just epic, it's the epic that other epics pass down as legend from generation to generation. Take the most indulgent, unapologetically angsty, hurt-comforty, smarmy piece of fanfic you've ever written or read or printed out and put in a binder and kept under your pillow; and then imagine that binder was given to a major Hollywood studio with a giant budget who serialized it for television and then cast LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell as the leads. Well, you no longer have to imagine it, because IT HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE. Sometimes we joke about making things up with our minds, but guys, I think this time it actually happened!

For more details, check out these awesome people:

From

laceymcbain: 5 Reasons You Should Be Watching NCIS: Los Angeles

From

gabriellemb: a primer with pictoral evidence of the slashiness.

And from

drlense, hilarious weekly ~~recaps~~ SLASHCAPS, all under her "ncisgay" tag.

( Two things about last Tuesday's episode (1.07, Pushback) that only serve to highlight the OTT-ness of it all: )

Jim Kirk, is that you??

( this tumblr is have being the greatest invention of all time )

For reasons that don't bear exploring at this juncture, I no longer have access to a car, and so I have been re-discovering the joys of public transportation and walking all over town. The weather's already turned cold, thank god, and I'm honestly enjoying it; though no one else seems to want me to walk long distances, or at night, or by myself. I find all of those concerns irritating to varying degrees, in that they always come off as condescending and paternalistic, even though I understand that there is a certain amount of real risk. Which also makes me irritated! I have been reading up on rape culture lately, does it show??

Anyway, everywhere is walking distance if you have the time, and I have, seriously, all the time in the world, and time flies when you have your ipod with you! So at first I used this as the perfect opportunity to catch up on all my podcasts; but then I actually caught up on all my podcasts, and I realized I was going to have to wait another week for the next episode of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" to air; and THEN I remembered that I had the Star Trek audiobook on my computer but I'd never listened to it. YES.

So here are some random thoughts on what I've heard so far (I'm about two-thirds of the way through), keeping in mind that I've been listening while walking and therefore unable to write anything down, so these are just the random bits I remembered.

( Zachary Quinto, that is a lot of talking. I salute you! )

my world's the surface of the moon.

you know our hearts beat time out very slowly

you are the habit i can't seem to kick

precious metals, heirlooms, fur, tobacco products

hope i get a harmonica

that's all the family news that we're allowed to talk about.

where would i be right now if all my dreams had come true

said all their names three times

ten years on the coast, figuring out the weather

for a girl who was born in an oil drum

with my rumdiddlyumdiddlyumdiddly, i'm so deep

bullets of pure love

sulking and writing poetry are my hobbies

coffee cake, ice cream, and a bottle of ten-dollar wine

i realize this is not a movie i saw, this is a dream i had

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