the best imitation of myself

i just came to say hello

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 04:19:39 GMT

just me showing up ten years late to dreamwidth with starbucks

. . . hello?

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extended-release bi-layer tablets

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:10:55 GMT

Last Thursday was a really good day! I had a little workout, I looked smashing in my suit, I rocked my job interview. I had a tickle in my throat, but I sucked on some cough drops and powered through. I babysat for the rest of the afternoon, and then I daaaanced for a whole lot of hours with silentfire and E., and we grabbed dinner and drank a bunch, nice job, good show!

In the early hours of Friday morning, I woke up with a fever, a wet, hacking cough, and what felt like ground glass in my throat. I spent the weekend buried under blankets, staring glassy-eyed at the television and not getting called back about the job. My lymph nodes were tender to the touch and my throat was swollen, and I couldn't stop swallowing. I took the cold medication I had leftover from a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't put a dent in my fever, which held steady at or around 101 degrees. I started to sort my laundry but had to stop and lie down halfway through. Saturday night Kansas and M. brought me extra-strength acetaminophen and ice cream and four kinds of chicken soup, i.e. the only things in life that I wanted at that moment, because they are angels, and my fever broke for the first time. Sunday my chest felt tight when I breathed, like I could really feel where my lungs were, trying to inflate, and the bits of phlegm I kept painfully gagging up were, oh, I haven't double-checked my Pantone colors, but I would call it mauve. Yes. Monday morning I took myself down to the doc in the box, where they swiftly diagnosed both bronchitis AND strep and dosed me up with a ten-day course of amoxicillin. YAY DRUGS YAY.

Hooray modern medicine and forcing fluids. My fever was gone by Tuesday, and after forty-eight hours on antibiotics, spent exclusively convalescing and expectorating, I feel loads better, though I'm still super tired, I have zero appetite, and my voice is shot to hell. I'm back at work today, and I've sent a follow-up thank-you email to the prospective employers with an invisible attachment that just reads PLZ HIRE ME OH GOD PLEASE over and over and over again. Perhaps by tomorrow I will be ready for dancing again!

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like a toothpick in a club sandwich

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 03:28:39 GMT

a. Last weekend silentfire came and stayed at my place, and we had brunch, and then I got taken out for delicious, delicious tapas (because tapas means never having to make up your mind!) with A. and L. and Kansas and M., and it was way too loud to be as awkward as it could have been, and I got PRESENTS, and then silentfire and I went dancing and drinking until 4 a.m. Well, I did most of the dancing. Um, and the drinking. Then we spent Sunday a) sleeping the fuck in, b) eating brunch, c) sitting in the coffee shop down the street with our laptops set up back-to-back on a tiny table, sending each other fic quotes over chat and making dozens and dozens of Sensitive Steve macros (our new all-time favorite pastime), and d) eating meatloaf and watching Megamind with Kansas and M. In conclusion: A++, WOULD HAVE A BIRTHDAY AGAIN.

b. Usually my parents give me money for my birthday (always a good choice!), but this year they got me a gift certificate to Amazon, and it's BRILLIANT. I have never felt more like a kid in a candy store. There are a ton of books and DVDs that have been on my wishlist for ages, and I could probably use a small kitchen appliance or two (electric kettle? hot pot? toaster oven?), but at the top of my list these days are new headphones, a printer, and a kegel exerciser. I can't wait for them all to come in half a dozen boxes over the next two weeks!

c. I have a job interview tomorrow! It's just a part-time front-desk position at this, like, boutique optometrist's office, and I'd try not to get excited about it, but fuck it, I AM. I'm excited. My hopes are up. On the phone yesterday morning the optometrist emphasized repeatedly that he isn't looking to hire someone—he's looking to hire the ~RIGHT~ someone. So even if it's unsuccessful, it has the potential to at least be extremely hilarious.

d. I'm a week or two behind on all my shows. TV shouldn't feel like homework. >:(

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they made me memorize all seven hundred words in the canadian dictionary

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:45:22 GMT

a. I've been in my new place for almost two months, and they haven't even made noises about kicking me out yet! I call that SUCCESS.

b. Remember that time an adorable toddler tipped a glass of water all over my laptop and it stopped working, and then through a combination of seasonal holiday mall shenanigans, the Great Icing Over of 2011, personal transportation issues, and deep denial, it was weeks before I could get to the Apple Store for an assessment, during which I spiraled deeper and deeper into isolation and depression? Well, Apple told me they would happily fix anything that ailed it for a standard flat fee that wasn't necessarily unreasonable, but WAS more than a month's rent—and therefore prohibitively expensive—thereby knocking me out of the fourth stage of grief where I'd been stalled for some time; and THEN gjstruthseeker swooped in like the most bad-ass, technologically-advanced fairy godmother EVER and surprised me with a brand-spanking-new machine. I think I teared up a little as I took it out of the box. I HAVE JUST MET YOU, I told it, AND I LOVE YOU. We're going to be so, so happy together. I hope one day to be able to return the favor a thousandfold. <333333

c. I'm totally going to learn to vid on my new boss laptop, no really, seriously, this time I mean it! I've got a bunch of tutorials to sift through, but so far they all seem to go something like,

1. Acquire source
2. Convert to editing-compatible format
3. Clip
4. Import
5. ????
6. ~~Profit!~~ Export

Is it me, or is there an important part of the vidding process missing, i.e. THE VIDDING. D:

d. If I ever figure out iMovie, my first vid is PROBABLY going to be an ode to methodology and police procedure on Hawaii Five-0. NO, WAIT, I MEAN—what's the opposite of an ode?

e. Hawaii Five-0: I just. I have so many feelings.

f. So last fall I made some new friends (a hilarious story for another day), and one night after hanging out and drinking all afternoon, they were like, let's go to the 3-Legged Cowboy! which is a local gay & lesbian country-western bar in Midtown, and I was like suuuuure, sounds awesome, because I had been drinking all afternoon. And it turns out I LOVE DANCING, YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS, I LOVE DANCING. I didn't know how to do any of it, either the line dances or the two-step, but they gave me the Cliffs Notes version and told me there were free lessons during the week. So I came for the lessons (it turns out that line dancing is exactly like all those hundreds of hours of choreographed aerobics I adored, only WITH BONUS DRINKING; also it's HARDER, because you have to memorize the routines, and there are like a thousand fucking routines, this shit is hardcore), and sometimes silentfire would come too, and I would stay and drink and dance the dances I knew, even though sometimes I felt horribly awkward because PEOPLE OMG, and it's hard to be a human being, but I got to talking with a couple of people, and one of them was like, heyyy do you want to join our dance troupe? Because it turns out there is an actual thing called the International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs, and they host dance competitions; and after being assured that I really didn't need any actual prior knowledge or dancing ability, I was like, what the hell, okay! And now I have paid club dues and everything, and we're learning ballroom dances and jazz choreography, and basically I love every minute of it. Dancing! WHO KNEW.

g. Today I spent several hours in the DMV sitting in a molded plastic chair with my crossword puzzles and some podcasts, along with what seemed like half the population of metro Atlanta, including A BABY THAT CRIED FOR AN HOUR STRAIGHT. I mean, that poor kid, Jesus, but also my nerves are never going to be the same again. But now I have a Georgia driver's license! My picture is totally horrifying, I look like I'm drunk, so I figure all is right with the world.

h. It's my birthday tomorrow! In my time zone, tomorrow happened forty-five minutes ago. :D

i. What would I do without lists? I would never post again, that's what. HI, INTERNET!

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every day is your birthday

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 04:22:18 GMT

a. Thank you so much for the lovely holiday card, talitha78!

b. I am cleared to move in to the new place! Oh my god, it's actually happening. I was so sure something was going to fuck it all up, but it's happening! And they actually sound pleased to have me! I'm going to pack up as much as I can so we can move some of it in this Friday, and then the rest of it hopefully by next weekend. Exciting, yet terrifying, yet exciting!

c. My laptop is still completely unresponsive, but my brother thinks it might still need to dry out, and counsels patience. I have left it languishing in a heap of dessicant pellets.

d. Speaking of dessication, I have finally gone out and bought gloves to wear to bed, because my hands are so badly chapped they're cracking and bleeding, which is not only a) painful, and b) immensely unattractive, but c) an engraved invitation to infection. I try to hydrate (which I find so much harder to do in the winter; in the summer when I'm sweating buckets every day I have no trouble downing glass after glass of water) and I try to keep moisturized, but I end up washing my hands a thousand times a day, even when I'm not looking after the toddler and the three dogs. So I'm giving the moisture lock gloves a chance. Anyone have any experience wearing them to bed? Or any other suggestions? Lotion recommendations?

When my parents were here last week, my dad caught sight of my red knuckles and pointed them out to my mom, wondering if I had maybe gotten them from a punching bag? Agreed: belonging to a fight club would be so much more interesting than chronically dry skin.

e. silentfire got me an iPod Shuffle! It's so wee and shiny and easily clipped on to my person, it's almost enough to make me sorry that lately my employers have been lending me their car for my commute, and I haven't been spending two hours a day (or more!) either riding on or waiting for public transportation. ALMOST. It is currently full up with music and Jim Gaffigan's stand-up and the latest Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! pocast. Walking will be fun again! Oh my goodness, I don't even know what to name it. Ri, you already know how much I love you, but iluuuu!

f. All I have to do is a hundred loads of laundry, and all I want to do is roll around in the Yuletide archive. Repeat, with minimal variations, for the story of my life.

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everybody's all excited about it

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:10:09 GMT

GOOD NEWS: Survived my nephew's bar mitzvah and all attendant family functions!

BAD NEWS: M. and I discovered that our parents are waaaay more passive-aggressive and otherwise emotionally dysfunctional than previously believed! Not to mention emotionally manipulative, and willing to drag us into manipulating each other for them. The details are too tedious to get into, but the most bizarre part is that just giving their honest reasons for their actions would be enormously less hurtful and dramatic (also less insulting, and infinitely less mysterious) than the nervous, clumsy, utterly transparent lies they tell instead, all in the effort to avoid confrontation. They're old and unlikely to change without therapy, and they're not likely to get therapy; I would settle for having an accurate sense of how their minds work so we can anticipate and react accordingly, instead of being blindsided all the time.

GOOD NEWS: Assuming I survive their vetting process (not actually guaranteed, my credit being what it is), I have found a place to live! I'm vacillating between being genuinely excited about it, regretting the few downsides, dreading the packing-moving-unpacking process, and freaking the fuck out. All things considered, it's probably the best deal out there for me, and I'm crossing my fingers that it goes through.

BAD NEWS: On Monday the adorable toddler adorably tipped a full glass of water right across my laptop while it was open and running. Having spilled water over my keyboard on two (TWO!) separate occasions while in college, I know very well that proper protocol is to drain, unplug, and allow to dry thoroughly. All of which I did. Except that I had a bad feeling about it even as I was draining it, when I heard the optical drive grind out its start-up sound several times; and when I went to power it down, I found it had already turned itself off. Seventy-two hours of immersion in rice later, I have a sleek, white, 2006-era brick. And rice all over the floor. It might be all the electrical components that are shot; it might just be the power supply, or the on/off button; if nothing else, the hard drive itself will probably be salvageable. I've been mostly numb about it, but every once in a while I'll suddenly burst into tears. I only use it for EVERYTHING.

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worlds above and worlds below

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:34:36 GMT

While I'm sifting my way through Craigslist, I figure it can't hurt to ask: is there anyone within reading distance of this post who's living in Atlanta and looking for a roommate, or willing to take one on? Feel free to email, PM, comment with hilarious apartment-hunting stories, etc.

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and i don't understand why i sleep all day

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 05:12:59 GMT

a. I always find alphabetical lists are easier to read through than big bunches of unorganized paragraphs. They're at least more easily skimmed, amirite?

b. Have gotten my babysitting job back, which is fortunate, since I haven't got any other jobs at the moment.

c. A. has finally served me notice of eviction, in the kindest, most passive-aggressive way possible, so I will definitely be moving into a place of my own sometime soon, probably! Or else!

d. It really slammed into me tonight how much I miss gjstruthseeker. For years I had her within arms' reach (or at least within a stone's throw), and now for years she's been halfway around the world, not even a phone call away. I adore the friends I have here, and I know I need to get better at making and keeping new ones, but I miss her so much.

e. Chanukah came so early this year (and I am in such tenuous and sporadic contact with most of the members of my family) that three of my non-Jewish friends were the first to tell me about it. I should probably put that kind of thing on my calendar. HAPPY CHANUKAH, EVERYONE (WHO CELEBRATES IT). I hope you have all seen this. :D

f. Sometimes I download episodes of television from the internet, and then I watch them! And SOMETIMES I then read massive amounts of fanfiction about it, or about other things and/or people!* One day I will again post about these phenomena.

g. Recently I revisited the Enneagram online personality test and it SPOKE to my SOUL.** Between that and internet research wrt Avoidant Personality Disorder, I have gotten a much better sense of my actual current state of mind and being than therapy ever gave me. Not that it's solved anything, but then therapy never did either.

h. AM SO DRUNK RIGHT NOW WHAT.

* Most of them I bookmark here, though I'm dreadfully behind.
** [Unhealthy] Type Four.

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find a darkened corner

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 06:22:19 GMT

a. I had the most amazing time with gjstruthseeker and her husband in St. Pete and in Orlando. We ate food! We talked fandom! We played road games! We roamed for miles across the Disney and Universal theme parks until we were hobbled! We wore costumes to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party! We attempted to drink our way around the world at Epcot, and failed, but somehow still won! We experienced the Harry Potter Experience: A++! Would experience again! And we bemoaned the fact that they are still living halfway across the world. I seriously miss those guys when they're not here.

b. While I was gone, A.'s mother went into hospice. She had fought an up-and-down battle with brain tumors for years, shockingly aggressive brain tumors, that spread in the last couple of years to her back. The doctors had talked about hospice back in the spring, when things looked very bad: she was wheelchair-bound, she wasn't coherent, she was in horrible pain all the time; her last bout of chemo had been so awful she swore she wasn't ever going through it again. But they put her on a new drug, and she rallied, and she had a beautiful, healthy summer. The last downturn came suddenly, and progressed very quickly. Before I went out of town, her unbearable pain had returned, and they hadn't been able to manage it. They'd called an ambulance to take her to the ER after she'd finally fallen asleep and then been unresponsive for hours; they'd done MRIs the week before which they expected to show that the tumors were growing again.

In the week I was gone, she developed a high fever that they couldn't bring down; an MRI showed a hemorrhage in her brain. She was completely unresponsive. Her organs started to fail. They made the decision to begin providing comfort care only, and moved her to hospice. That was on Saturday, the 18th of September. I got home Sunday night. I went to see her on Monday, which turned out to be her last good day, the last day she was responsive to anyone, able to listen to people on the phone if someone held it up to her ear, laughing at her best friend's stories when she called; for a couple of days after that she seemed to be responsive to pain, because we could see her grimace when they turned her; then she stopped responding to anything. They steadily increased her morphine to ease her breathing. They explained what was happening to her body—the edema, the lividity, the fluid in her lungs—as her organs continued to shut down. She turned gray. Her sisters had flown in, and my dad had come too, to help my half-sister with her kids. We stayed with her all day and went home at night.

It's surreal to sit in a room all day and watch someone die. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about it, whether it's a good and natural thing to be that close to death, or whether it's really fucking weird (and god knows my family doesn't talk about it), or just weird because I'm an interloper here anyway. So: surreal. Squeamish; awkward; morbid; terrifically sad, of course. And I couldn't help wondering why (though I knew why) they couldn't just give her one extra-big dose of morphine the next time she was due. Not while she was still fighting, not even while she could still lie motionless and drugged, not talking, but laughing on the phone if you held it up to her ear; but after that, when they hadn't given her food or fluids for days, and kept saying it was only a matter of hours—a few or forty-eight, but hours—when she'd long stopped responding to anyone or anything and her body was shutting down functions one by one.

She died early on Friday morning, the 24th of September. And it was Shabbat, so the funeral wasn't until Sunday (and because of Sukkot, they didn't sit shivah; THAT was weird), which gave a lot of people time to fly in. I drove out to the airport three separate times on Saturday. It's hard to say how I feel, because I'm so divorced from my feelings most of the time: sad, obviously, but mostly because other people are so sad. Because her children lost their mother, and her siblings lost their sister, and my niece and nephews lost their grandmother. Because she was undoubtedly the best and kindest person in her family. I cried at the funeral, and so did my mom and my brother, because hey, we're criers. We cry at movies and TV shows and books; we would cry at the funeral of a stranger—they say such nice things, and emotions are so close to the surface. And it's magnified a thousand times when it's someone you knew, when you know all those nice things are true.

This was someone to whom I had no technical relationship: she was the mother of my half-siblings; we have the same dad. I can't believe English doesn't have tidier, more precise nomenclature for these relationships, especially considering how many people could probably use them, and considering that people always want to know exactly how you're related. In Yiddish we would just say we were mishpocha—family, extended family. I'd only met her a couple of times before I moved up here four years ago, and then I saw her all the time, and I just became family to her, the way my brother did when he moved up here a couple of years before me; that's something A. talked about at the funeral, that anyone who came into her life, she kept in her life. And now she's gone.

c. The kid I was babysitting for has gone into daycare, which will be wonderful for him, and great for his parents, and is disastrous for me. I'm out of a job and at loose ends again, which apparently means a reversion to hiding in bed all day and despairing about ever being employed or doing anything with my life, ever, etc., etc. Kansas thinks now is the time to apply for grad school again, though just contemplating the process and my prospects fills me with dread, so wish me luck with that.

d. I thought summer would never, ever be over, and then BAM it was fall. I'm so fucking grateful. The thing is, my room is horribly insulated, and I've been sleeping horribly for the last few nights, because I've been waking up cold. This seemed like a ridiculous reason to sleep badly. So I dragged out all my blankets and put on my flannel sheets and broke out my flannel pajamas, and now I'm just sleeping badly due to general anxiety. So all is right with the world.

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we're gonna need a montage!

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:30:49 GMT

In no particular order:

a. HIPSTER DINOSAURS. This is my new favorite thing in the world. "I remember when this volcano was dormant. This volcano used to have integrity."

b. I have had the most amazing tension headache all day today. The muscles behind my ears are so tight and tender they feel like twin goose eggs.

c. I saw Inception the week after it was released, because I was so excited about it and the cut tags were so full of exclamation marks; I think I can sum up my feelings about it by saying I immediately went home and wrote up four thousand words in reaction to it, but I didn't actually care. I.e.: ambivalence.

d. My main fandom at the moment is Due South. I know, right? This is something like my sixth Due South personal renaissance since 2001. I've just re-watched the entire series (most episodes for the very first time!), and I'm reading (and re-reading) what feels like ALL the fic. Those guys! I have a vid idea that I want to make so badly, I can actually listen to the song on repeat and watch it in my head. Though if it's like every other vid I've ever wanted to make, it will never make it out of my head. :/

e. I don't think I've mentioned the job I've had since April, which is babysitting a (now) 17-month-old during the day while his parents are at work (and their three dogs, whom I loathe; but the kid is great). A partial list of things I have successfully taught him to date: his first word ("hi"); where his nose is; The Itsy-Bitsy Spider; The Wheels on the Bus; how to high-five; to pick things up when he drops them; to cheer for Roger Federer.

f. I'm in the middle of one crochet project and three knitting projects, with half a dozen more in the pipeline.

g. In the space of about two weeks I went from "I still don't get this podfic stuff!" to being OBSESSED with podfic—both the listening to and the recording thereof. I've already begun systematically ransacking the audiofic archive, but is there a good source of podfic meta/discussion anywhere handy? I have so many questions!

h. silentfire and I are playing late-night trivia again tonight, having taken second place three times in the past few weeks. Last week's was a thrilling come-from-behind success story, in which knowledge of—yes!—the names of all the presidents of the United States was the crucial bit of knowledge we had to call upon.

i. It's U.S. Open time! FEDERER OR BUST.

j. I'm meeting up with gjstruthseeker and her husband in Orlando in a few weeks, which should be extremely awesome; and I'm almost definitely going to North Carolina in October for the SAFF with, like, all of my female relatives, about which I am considerably more ambivalent.

k. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been a few days now, and I'm starting to believe that summer might actually be almost over. Oh god, this summer has been so wretched. And that's only taking into account the WEATHER.

l. White Collar! How is that show even REAL?!

m. This morning P. (the father of the kid I sit for) and I were discussing revenge narratives in the literary and cinematic canons, as well as in real life—specifically, ones in which the seeker of revenge is consumed and ultimately destroyed by his own obsessive quest, e.g. Moby Dick. I pointed out that we were finding it harder than expected to come up with examples because we currently celebrate and privilege that kind of story, and it more often ends in triumph than tragedy. I explained the concept of ~manpain. Any suggestions?

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all four have been brought back to life in their respective universes

Sun, 23 May 2010 17:55:35 GMT

Saw Iron Man 2 with silentfire two weeks ago, have been ranting ever since.

In the interests of full disclosure: I LOVED the first movie. I saw it multiple times in theaters; I Wikipediaed the shit out of the comics history*; I read what I swear was all the meta and every relevant fic available on the internet; I shipped Tony/Rhodey, Tony/Steve, Tony/Pepper, Tony/Jarvis, Tony/self-loathing, etc.; and I was grateful every day that fandom was there to challenge and reconcile the skeevy international politics and any gaping plot holes. There were explosions! There was a shout-out to the Iron Man theme song! It had Robert Downey, Jr. interacting with the cutest anthropomorphized robot since Wall·E! It had THE GREATEST ENDING EVER.

So I WANTED to be excited about the sequel, but based on the trailers and vague rumblings on the internet (and let's face it, the more you have invested in a franchise, the more likely it is to let you down), I had a sinking feeling about it. I THOUGHT I was going in with low expectations, but what I was really going in with was the expectation that it would suck; and, hey! It did! I thought it was a rambling, incoherent mess! It introduced a slew of plot elements that had nothing to do with each other, didn't actually develop any of them, and then handwaved them all to explodey resolutions and kissing on rooftops.

Plot Elements in Iron Man 2 (A Partial List):

The corporate rivalry with Justin Hammer
Vanko's revenge narrative on behalf of his father
Tony's palladium poisoning and subsequent self-destructive spiral
Discovering and synthesizing A NEW ELEMENT
Tony resigning from Stark Enterprises and handing control over to Pepper
Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D., and recruitment to the Avengers Initiative
The Stark Expo
Tony's Daaaaaddy Issues
Tony and Pepper: will they/won't they???
The Senate hearings
Rhodey's conflict of interests

The first Iron Man had, in comparison, a laser-like focus, in which the narrative consisted of one over-arching plot that everything else supported. Tony himself had this very clear character arc that went something like "entitled douchebag → TRAUMA → rude awakening → TRAUMA → PTSD → disillusionment → existential aaaangst → [technoporn interlude] → "there's the next mission, and nothing else" → betrayal! → triumph and redemption → THE END??" Not quite the epic journey, but immensely satisfying, with room to grow on. Except instead of growing on it, Iron Man 2 turned the clock right back to "entitled douchebag", and then cranked it up to ELEVEN.

If they'd jettisoned a couple of things, and then foregrounded a couple of other things and let all the other elements be support, it might have been awesome. E.g.:

Tony's Daddy Issues + Vanko's Revenge. Fathers and sons! CLASSIC. Unbeknownst to practically everyone (but, most importantly, Tony!!), Howard Stark had a PARTNER that he screwed over and essentially erased from history! There could have been awesome Cold War flashbacks to Vanko, Sr. and Stark, Sr.! They could have taken Tony's resentment toward and hero worship of his father and developed the parallels to Vanko's devotion to his own father and his anger toward Stark, Sr. AND Jr. on his father's behalf. Instead, Tony just exposits his ~manpain, and then ten minutes later he gets a super-secret blast-from-the-past deus-ex-machina message from his dad that says, basically, "for plot purposes it is important that for the first forty years of your life you think I never loved you or expected you to amount to anything, but LOL j/k I totally did! Good luck!" Uh, okay! Way to be a dick, Dad. I guess this makes it all better?

It would have been so cool to see Howard working on the element too, this thing that he could conceive of but knew he would never be able to create in his lifetime, a vision that he needed his son to realize. Tony even says in the beginning at the Expo that legacy is the most important thing, but they only spend ten minutes on it, telling us about it instead of showing it to us, and it's buried in all the other bullshit that's going on all over the place.

Additional Themes Raised in Iron Man 2 With Little or No Self-Awareness, Exploration, or Resolution (A Partial List):

Hubris
Sacrifice
Mortality
Loyalty
The State vs. the Individual

For what it's worth, I loved Rourke as Vanko. I loved his pet bird, his glasses, and his amused contempt for Hammer, especially that scene where Hammer comes in and throws a tantrum and takes away his SHOES, and Vanko is like, uh, I spent FIFTEEN YEARS IN A RUSSIAN PRISON, I think I will survive this deprivation. But I thought his montage scene over the opening credits was a failure, because they jumped into it with so little context, and then it was basically the lite version of That Scene Where Tony Builds the Suit out of Scraps While Prisoner in a Cave in the Middle of the Desert (Now Less Filling!). At a later point, with more backstory, it could have been really powerful and resonant instead of a weak imitation.

Justin Hammer. Sam Rockwell was brilliant and hilarious as Hammer (his orange hands!), but I hated Hammer as a character. It would have been so much more interesting to have made him into an actual rival for Tony to strive against, some ambitious, capable, COMPARABLE competition outfitting a frighteningly powerful mercenary army, someone that he (and the audience) actually had to worry about and work hard to defeat, instead of a vapid foil for his infinitely superior intelligence and ability. I mean, I understand that at the end of the day Hammer was just the figurehead bankrolling Vanko, who was the real competition, but Tony was busy with SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY and didn't even know he was a threat until it was time to fight him.

Palladium Poisoning + Avengers Initiative + Technoporn + Virginia Potts, CEO. Listen, I am a SUCKER for the self-destructive spiral. One of the absolute BEST moments in the movie was Tony staring at himself in the mirror and muttering, "got any other bad ideas?" before embarking on an epically bad idea. That shit is my bread and butter. So have him push away all his friends, give control of the company to Pepper, and hit rock bottom, AWESOME; but then maybe have him spend more than five minutes clawing his way out again? I mean, I am willing to suspend a lot of disbelief when it comes to comics, summer action movies, and summer action movies based on comics. A LOT. But COME ON. Building a particle accelerator out of spare parts and synthesizing A NEW ELEMENT in an AFTERNOON? I would have preferred just a LITTLE more distance between "impossible" and "that was easy".

And hey, how about giving Tony some HELP, instead of just placing him under house arrest and telling him he can't come out until he's saved his own life? Bring in Reed Richards! Or Hank Pym! Hello, Avengers Initiative? Have Tony decide to join SHIELD because he realizes he doesn't have all the resources or all the answers, and he can't do it alone, but together they can do anything! Oh wait, I guess he can do it alone. So tell me again why he would ever join them? Because Tony's naturally such a JOINER, right? I'm sure I read that on his Wikipedia page.

I loved that Pepper was running Stark Enterprises (along with Natalie!), and one of the things I hated the MOST was Pepper's hysterical resignation of the position at the end of the movie because her BODY couldn't handly the STRESS. Way to perpetuate the "weaker sex" mythology!

Additional Gender Politics Fail in Iron Man 2 (A Partial List):

The Iron Man . . . cheerleaders? at the Expo
The slut-shaming of Christine Everhard
Maria Stark: The Case of the Disappearing Mother
Pepper's SHOES WTF (see above re: a generous but ultimately limited suspension of disbelief)

. . . On the other hand, I LOVED the way Pepper came in to the Expo when Shit Was Getting Real and took charge of everything, including calling the POLICE and delegating tasks to the people at the consoles.

Iron Man vs. War Machine + Senate Hearings. Don Cheadle turned in an oddly muted performance as Rhodey, and he was criminally underused. At some point they must have said to themselves, "we got Don Cheadle! SCORE. Let's have him stand here silently while Sam Rockwell's character explains what a pistol is to an Air Force colonel." What a fucking waste. Tony is Rhodey's best friend; Rhodey loves him and believes in him and is WORRIED about him; but Rhodey works for the government and has orders to follow, while Tony is part of, yet apart from, government oversight and the military-industrial complex, especially in the wake of his return from Afghanistan, when he vowed not to make any more weapons, and then . . . proceeded to make an enormously powerful weapon, except that this time he kept it for his own personal use.

I'd hate to break it to him, but I don't see how Tony has privatized world peace in any way, let alone successfully. What he's done is incite escalation, as confirmed by the footage they showed at the hearings. Plus, he's one person! He can literally only be in one place at a time! And yeah, he's pretty powerful and pretty zippy, but I think a nuclear weapon could take him down? Plus there's the fact that he doesn't actually know how to use the suit! I mean, he knows how to use it because he made it, he knows how to fly it and shoot the weapons, but—as illustrated in the final fight scene—he doesn't know military strategy or tactics ("we're standing in the kill box; people go there to die!") and I sure as hell don't think he knows anything about GEOPOLITICS. Can he declare war on foreign nations? Has he signed the Geneva Convention? Whose agenda is he following? If it's his own, what are his objectives? What has he even been DOING lately that qualifies him to say "it's working"? This is a guy who we're supposed to believe didn't even know HIS OWN COMPANY was selling weapons to terrorists until those terrorists literally kidnapped him and rubbed his face in the evidence.

Instead of politely asking a charming and arrogant white male multi-billionaire to please turn over his undeniably expensive, objectively cool, one-of-a-kind invention to the state in publically-televised Senate hearings**, they should just CONFISCATE THE FUCKING SUIT. Or make keeping the suit conditional upon working for the military (or perhaps some sort of government-funded quasi-military organization that would pit super-powered individuals against possible super-powered threats, something like, I don't know, SHIELD?). At this point he's a vigilante operating an immensely powerful weapon with impunity and no regard for the rule of law either domestically or internationally; and unlike other heroes who have super-powers, the suit is something he MADE and CHOOSES to use. He might say "the suit and I are one", but it isn't actually TRUE. There has to be a hundred ways they can legally take it away from him, or at least prevent him from using it. Regulate its use! Call it a vehicle that can only be operated in designated areas with extensive training, a license, appropriate air/ground clearance, and never while intoxicated; and then establish stiff penalties for violations of those regulations! Hell, just declare him a threat to national security. Didn't Rhodey say something about rolling up the PCH and taking him by force? Should have done that!

Ugh. So clearly Rhodes was 100% in the right to fly off with the suit after the mortifying-slash-terrifying spectacle at Tony's birthday party, but didn't he leave Tony with his own suit? And all the other versions in the garage? Where are the override codes and failsafes I read about in fic all the fucking time? And why was that fight scene so BAD? What was with the riduculous "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" magical repulsor feedback loop? What is this, the graveyard scene in Goblet of Fire?

In short: just PICK A STORY and TELL IT (where "the story" ≠ "Tony Stark is Iron Man! . . . hijinks ensue!!") and then make a lot of things BLOW UP. There, I fixed it for you!

Additional Personal Reactions to Iron Man 2 (A Partial List):

I think I was supposed to be gratified by the the throwaway visual reference to Captain America, but I HATED it. It actually made me angrier than anything else in the movie, except maybe the Iron Man cheerleaders. Recall that the shield also made a cameo in the first Iron Man, in the background in Tony's workshop; it appears to be in the same state there as it is in the second movie, i.e. either broken or incomplete. When I saw it the first time, I didn't know anything about the comics so I couldn't understand what the implications of that were, but now I know that it makes zero sense (assuming basic canon (LOLLL)), since the original is lost along with Captain America, is the only one of its kind, and is made of AN INDESTRUCTIBLE FICTITIOUS METAL ALLOY***; but at least you could fanwank it away by saying it was a replica that Tony was working on in an attempt to recreate the vibranium alloy; and that kind of works, and is even kind of cool. But they destroy even that fragile thread of continuity in the second movie when Coulson doesn't recognize the shield, and frankly, it doesn't seem like TONY recognizes it either. Now we have a problem, because suddenly they have to be living in a universe where a) there was no Captain America, but for some reason there's a version of his shield knocking around (except that canonically Howard Stark was involved with Project Rebirth), or b) there was a Captain America, but he was so highly classified no one (not even a SHIELD agent) knew about him, or c) there was a Captain America, but he's been ~~forgotten by everyone (even SHIELD agents), or—oh, never mind, it turns out I don't have to break my brain fabricating a Watsonian solution, because Jon Favreau just put it in as a lark, ha ha! Fuck continuity anyway, whatever. >:(

Howard Stark introducing Stark Expo '74 was BASICALLY Walt Disney presenting the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow a.k.a. EPCOT in 1966, and the globe featured in the final battle looked an awful lot like Spaceship Earth.

EPCOT... will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise." -Walt Disney, 1966

Check out the retro video at the Stark Expo main site ("Stark Industries is creating better living for you and your family through technology!"). It all seems unavoidably evocative. Hey, remember that time Disney bought Marvel Entertainment, Inc.?

I still really like Agent Coulson!

Another one of my favorite moments in the movie was Tony bursting out with "I was going to make you an omelet and tell you!" Oh, TONY.

The "I don't like to be handed things" running gag was cute, but new for the sequel.

There was no way this movie didn't have a ridiculously high civilian casualty rate.

I really like the improvised, Robert Altman-esque overlapping dialog between Tony and Pepper. That scene with the two of them and Happy in the car, when Tony's trying to get his briefcase? GOLDEN.

The suit in the briefcase!! SO HOTT. But I really don't recommend Happy handcuff himself to it, since it's clearly the kind of thing would-be thieves would cheerfully slice his hand off for.

THOR! But, where IS Thor? Did he just accidentally drop his hammer from a great height? And what does Coulson mean by "we found it"? Was the giant crater and (I'm assuming) accompanying sonic boom NOT a dead giveaway? How long have they been "looking" for "it"? FINE I WILL SEE THE NEXT MOVIE, GOD.

Footnotes:

* Dear comics: OH MY GOD, WHAT? WHY??? D: Yours, &c.

** I would say this is a commentary on all the other times in recent memory the Senate has hauled in rich white men just to scold them and/or make toothless demands of them that will never, ever be enforced (cf. the financial industry, the auto industry, the health insurance industry, the oil industry, etc.), but I think that would again be giving the movie too much credit; and if anything, the message would be a thumbs-up to those industries to keep on doing whatever the hell they want.

*** If you want to giggle uncontrollably until you pull an intercostal muscle, please read the Wikipedia subarticle on VIBRANIUM CANCER. You will be rewarded!

comments

when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

Fri, 07 May 2010 16:23:39 GMT

Thank you to everyone who came by to take the poll about your fanfiction saving and storage habits! It's taking a little while, but I'm working my way through the comments, which are all AWESOME. Feel free to come by at any time and fill it out or add your two cents, as I have no plans of closing it down until I grow weary of discussing these matters at length and in excruciating detail, i.e. NEVER.

Speaking of adding one's two cents. This most recent iteration of "fanfiction is an abomination and you should all be ASHAMED of yourselves" is just as baffling and hilarious and offensive as all the previous iterations, and everyone has already lined up and knocked down all the responses, including:

Fanfiction is not illegal;

Even if fanfiction were determined to be illegal under current copyright laws, that would not make it immoral;

Fanfiction is unstoppable;

Fanfiction is not: stealing, trespassing, plagiarism, or rape. That's why there are words for all of those things! (You know what is rape? RAPE. The end!);

Fanfiction is a compliment to the author (people love your books! YOU'RE WELCOME), authorial intent is dead, and authors need to let go of the fantasy that they have any control over how their audience engages with a text once it's been released into the wild;

Fanfiction (and the community from which it springs, fandom), brings a lot of joy to a lot of people while bringing harm to no one;

Fanfiction is not (at least, not necessarily) merely a means to an end (where "the end" is one day becoming a "real" writer of original works), but is in fact an end in and of itself;

Fanfiction can and often does (though it doesn't have to and doesn't always) take as much or more time, effort, research, skill, and imagination to produce as "real" fiction;

In fact, ALL art is an ongoing conversation between artists both living and dead; all art draws from the same communal well both within and (with caveats) across cultures; and all art is therefore always essentially derivative, the only difference being one of degree and deliberateness. Fanfiction (along with the larger modern-day transformative and remix culture) is merely the latest incarnation of storytelling traditions that are as old as culture itself, and it only seems weird because never before have so many people had access to writing and publishing tools, and this era of rapidly expanding (N.B. not universal) access follows right on the heels of ANOTHER anomolous era, one characterized by 1) very limited access to—and very tightly-held control of—the tools of writing and publishing, not to mention 2) restrictive laws governing who can do what with the finished product (with the advantage almost never going to the creator of OR the audience for the work, but to the handlers, gatekeepers, and middlemen), to say nothing of 3) largely unspoken rules governing who is allowed to write and what they are allowed to write about. As is always the case when a culture or some aspect of it undergoes unrest and transition, one age didn't smoothly begin just as the other ended, and instead they are currently overlapping and generating incredible friction because of it, like tectonic plates sliding against each other;

Fanfiction by any other name is written by professional authors ALL THE TIME, and THEY get to be lauded as literary lights! HYPOCRISY.

Regarding that last point: Whether or not you subscribe to the theory that all art is derivative (as I do), I think almost everyone will allow that at least some art—that is, some published, for-profit, critically-acclaimed art—is derivative. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, for example, or Wicked, or Girl with a Pearl Earring. bookshop has a great big list of them right over here. I'm going to paraphrase what I said to leksa when she asked whether collating these lists was even a good idea, let alone a convincing argument*:

See, whenever this issue comes up (every six to twelve months?), I just want to yell, "RICHARD III, THE END", and have it actually BE the end. But it doesn't work like that, because I don't think the problem is selective memory. I don't think anyone who believes fanfiction is a scourge and a crime ever looks at those lists in this context and suddenly realizes, "My god! Richard III was a real person, I forgot! That makes Richard III fanfiction! And if Shakespeare did it, it must be okay!" I think what they almost always say instead is, that doesn't count. That is, that what Shakespeare did in Richard III (and, you know, ALL of his other plays) was fundamentally different from what fanfiction writers on the internet do when they write stories about Harry and Draco, or the characters in Diana Gabaldon's stories (whoever they may be; I swear I had never even HEARD of this woman before this week), or celebrity figures in our contemporary culture.

So through a combination of goalpost-moving, equivocation, and good old-fashioned double standards, they wind up with a fallacious line of argument that goes something like, "what you (fans on the internet) write is horrible, because it is fanfiction; what I (the respectable, published, critically-acclaimed author) write is not fanfiction, because it is good."

Implicit in this reasoning is not only the premise that fanfiction can never be "good" and will never be literature; but an even deeper contempt for fandom in all its forms, and for fans in particular (or at least for fans as they are imagined to be), variously women, teenagers, nerds, losers, amateurs, and plebs—the pathetic, the shrill, and the common. It's a righteous, elitist fury directed at the seething masses who are daring to do something they have no business doing, something above them. Well, fuck that.

The reality is that at least some art is derivative; some is posted by amateurs on the internet, and some is published by respectable publishing houses and printed in books; and some of it is good, and some of it is bad, for whatever values of "good" and "bad" you want to work from; but you can't change those values to suit your argument. And every time you try, those losers on the internet are going to be more than happy to explain how ridiculous you sound, using very small words that hopefully you can understand.

* To clarify, and to hopefully better represent leksa's original thoughts on the subject (see her comment below), obviously these lists are a) true!, b) satisfying and gratifying to those of us within fandom, and c) sometimes genuinely effective in changing people's perspectives wrt fanfiction; but they're limited in their efficacy when people can dismiss those parallels between fanfiction and original fiction (for which I discuss at least one motivation above), OR (as leksa pointed out) when people accept those parallels, but dismiss and disparage those professional derivative works as much as the amateur ones.

ETA: Thank you for making my point for me, Jasper Fforde!

My thoughts on Fan Fiction are pretty much this: That it seems strange to want to copy or 'augment' someone else's work when you could expend just as much energy and have a lot more fun making up your own. I feel, and I think with good reason, very proprietorial about Thursday and all her escapades; clearly I can't stop you writing and playing what you want in private, and am very flattered that you wish to do so. But anything published in any form whatsoever - and that specifically includes the internet - I cannot encourage, nor approve of.

- Jasper Fforde (emphasis mine)

In the world of Thursday Next, literature is a much more popular medium than in our world, and Thursday is a member of SO-27, the Literary Detectives or LiteraTecs. Her work is centred on Swindon, where she, her husband, infant, and mother live. The importance that literature has in this alternate England is reflected in the fact that so many people want to change their name to that of famous authors that some must be numbered, by law- e.g. John Milton 432. 'WillSpeak' machines are often to be found in public places, such as railway stations- these contain a mannequin of a Shakespearian Character and will quote that character's most famous speeches upon payment.

In addition, the line between literature and reality becomes increasingly thin, allowing characters in the books and those in 'real life' to jump in and out of novels. This leads Thursday to change the ending of Jane Eyre; the joke being that the plot we know in our reality is the far superior change caused by Thursday. This also happens to other classic novels- Uriah Heep becomes the obsequious, and generally insincere character we know, due to an accident inside the book-world and Thursday's uncle Mycroft becomes Sherlock Holmes's brother.

- Wikipedia

There is some Olympic-caliber mental gymnastics going on here! Obviously when Jasper Fforde copies and augments someone else's work, that is not "Fan Fiction". I can't help but wonder how he would feel about a published writer, a fellow author, incorporating Thursday, et al. into their own work. If, say, Neil Gaiman wrote a story that took place in the Socialist Republic of Wales, would Fforde feel just as "proprietorial"? Or would that be an entirely different proposition?

/ETA

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i read dead russian authors volumes at a time

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:30:19 GMT

Because it's something I've been grappling with for a while myself, I got curious about how other people save and store the fanfiction they read (or intend to read), either on- or offline. And since I just re-upped my paid time on dreamwidth, it looks like conditions are perfect for a poll! For these purposes, when I talk about "saving a story", I mean "putting it (or a link to it) in any physical, digital, or virtual space for your own personal access at a later date, for any reason". So:

View Poll: Your personal fanfiction curation habits: describe them to me!

Obviously this poll is limited to my own experiences and knowledge, so I would dearly love to hear about the practices that work for you. Or practices that are no longer working for you! There's also the fact that I myself am exclusively a reader and not a writer of fanfiction. If you're a writer, does that affect your archiving habits? Do you handle your own fic differently? What about saving other fannish works, like art and podfic and vids and meta? I'm especially unfamiliar with fanart communities and their homes on the web, and with vids I very quickly run into the problem of limited disk space. So what do you do?

Here's how my current system is set up: every story I read that I ever want to lay my hands on again, I a) save in html format to my laptop (which subsequently gets backed up to an external drive) and b) bookmark in my delicious account. It's important to me to have both, since anything can disappear from the internet at any moment (sites go down, links break, C&D letters are served, authors pull their work, etc.), but a library in the cloud is, by definition and design, accessible a) to anyone b) from anywhere. Thus, in a perfect world I would have a perfectly redundant system consisting of local, offline electronic copies and the corresponding referral links to the online versions of those stories.

But (spoiler!) it isn't a perfect world, and this is how things actually shake out:

As of this moment I have approximately 7,700 stories saved to my hard drive (and backed up on an external drive), a number that wildly underrepresents the amount of fanfiction I have actually read, even just counting the stuff I have read and loved. I first discovered "fandom" and fanfiction via Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the summer of 1998 and read exclusively and extensively in it (Buffy/Angel omg! and AOL! and web rings!) until 2001. And yet I only have, let me count . . . ONE Buffy story saved to my hard drive, and it was posted three months ago. At the time, I kept browser bookmarks of my favorite sites in my AOL account, but that was on my parents' computer, and they were lost to the ether when that machine failed. In the meantime, I had gone off to college with my own computer.

I first started saving stories some time toward the end of 2002, well after I'd discovered (simultaneously) Smallville and slash and livejournal (and fandom again, but for real this time), but I didn't have a saving policy, something helpful and exhaustive like "save every story that you might ever want to lay your hands on again". Over the next couple of years I read what probably amounted to thousands of stories across a whole bunch of fandoms (especially Smallville, popslash, Sports Night, Highlander, Due South, The Sentinel, Lotrips, and Harry Potter), but I saved a vanishingly small percentage of it all. During the summer of 2002 I tore through the entire (now defunct) Our Boys Sorkinfic archive but saved zero stories from it. As of one month ago (I've since had a renaissance!), I had only nine Highlander stories saved. NINE. I started saving scrupulously (using the above-mentioned policy) somewhere in or around 2004, when I was into Harry Potter for at least the second time around (the Remus/Sirius redux), Star Trek (TOS), and M*A*S*H.

By the end of 2005 (SGA, et al.) I had created my delicious account, and by early 2006 I was using it in fits and starts; it wasn't until three years later, in January of 2009 (Merlin), that I began bookmarking scrupulously—that is, bookmarking every story I saved. I have approximately 3,200 stories bookmarked there now, less than half the number of stories I have saved offline; but I have another couple of thousand unread stories bookmarked, to keep my number of open browser tabs to a minimum, and for rainy days.

At this point I don't know if I'm ever going to attempt to gather all those stories I read but never saved, assuming that I would WANT to; assuming I could remember any titles or authors or what songs the songfics were based on (lol j/k, it was Sarah McLachlan); assuming I could find them again, which presumes that they're even still available anywhere, or will ever be made available again, e.g. on the AO3. And then there's the matter of retroactively bookmarking the stories I saved in pre-delicious times: the thought of having them all together in one neatly-tagged* place is incredibly attractive, but hideously daunting. And at the end of the day, is delicious even the right place for it?

* And THAT'S a whole mess of meta for another day.

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the scent of your skin and some foreign flowers

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:28:06 GMT

Via porntestpilot, Diesel is releasing a limited edition Iron Man version of their Only The Brave cologne. BEHOLD:

silentfire: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
walkingshadow: :D :D :D :D
silentfire: ONLY THE BRAVE
silentfire: . . . would want to smell like tony stark
walkingshadow: . . . are willing to smell like someone who has spent the last eight days locked in a garage welding things to other things?
silentfire: oh god, why?
silentfire: also, that's a fist, right?
silentfire: the bottle is shaped like a fist?
walkingshadow: it is shaped like a fist!
walkingshadow: i'm sure it's supposed to be manly and menacing and not in any way crazily kinkily sexual!
silentfire: yeah, all i get from that is scary/bad porn
walkingshadow: oh god i just got a vision of someone using it to check off their "object penetration (unusual objects)" square for the next round of kink bingo
walkingshadow: WHY BRAIN WHY
silentfire: lolllllll
silentfire: well, it looks like a fist! encased in latex! clutching a sex toy!
silentfire: i don't blame you
walkingshadow: i mean what are we SUPPOSED to think?
walkingshadow: it's bondage iron man all over again!
silentfire: really, is there any other kind?
walkingshadow: no, bondage iron man is pretty much the only iron man

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this part was for her and this part was for her

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:51:11 GMT

I'm back from Florida (btw I went to Florida), where our seders were lovely and so was all the company. Well, most of it. I made it a full fifteen hours before the first stirrings of homicidal rage! My flight back last night was delayed two and a half hours (as were ALL the flights in the terminal, due apparently to . . . good weather? It's a mystery!) but I found friendly people at the bar, and also alcohol, and then silentfire was kind enough to pick my drunk self up from the airport at one a.m. (drunk is pretty much the only way to fly) and then gamely listen to my half-crazed fannish meta ramblings over coffee until three. I drew Venn diagrams! One day I will probably inflict them upon you all, apologies in advance.

Elsewhere: My dad is passive-aggressively furious at me, but that's not exactly new, and I even 75% deserve it. I'm thinking seriously about teaching English abroad (if you or someone you know has any experience or advice, please let me know?); I've made some promising contacts and struck up some actualfax correspondence. I'm behind on tv. I'm finally making progress on this pair of gloves I've started knitting like fifty times now, hallelujah.

And hey, Happy National Poetry Month:

In Praise of Limestone
W. H. Auden

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
     Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
     With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
     That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
     Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
     Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
     For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
     That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
     To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
     Are ingenious but short steps that a child's wish
To receive more attention than his brothers, whether
     By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.

Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down
     Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times
Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
     On the shady side of a square at midday in
Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
     There are any important secrets, unable
To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
     And not to be pacified by a clever line
Or a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,
     They have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
     Adjusted to the local needs of valleys
Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
     Their eyes have never looked into infinite space
Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb; born lucky,
     Their legs have never encountered the fungi
And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
     With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.
So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
     Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp
Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice
     For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all
But the best and the worst of us...
                                             That is why, I suppose,
     The best and worst never stayed here long but sought
Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
     The light less public and the meaning of life
Something more than a mad camp. "Come!" cried the granite wastes,
     "How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death." (Saints-to-be
     Slipped away sighing.) "Come!" purred the clays and gravels,
"On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
     Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
     Need to be altered." (Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched
     By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:
"I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
     That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad."

     They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
     Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
     And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
     Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
     It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
     Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
     By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
     Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's
     Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
     Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
     Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
     Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
     To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
     These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
     Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
     Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
     Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

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i was a huge phony before! i can do it again!

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:41:33 GMT

SOMEBODY WONDERFUL sent me a giant box full of my favorite LUSH products, oh my goodness. But all I found inside (I mean, APART from all of my favorite and most delicious-smelling things) was a short, cryptic, and utterly anonymous note, so I don't know to whom I should direct my thousand thank yous! Was it you? Was it YOU??

I know I've been utterly silent on the internet and living inside my own head again, etc., etc., I am working on that. Things about which I have not been posting include: a host of fannish meta (including—but by no means limited to!—lurking, appropriation, racism, intersectionality, the Holmes/Watson dynamic, characters of color, the broccoli test, and the state of the fandom), Avoidant Personality Disorder, the fourteen television shows I am following, doping in tennis, current issues in delicious bookmarking, human-computer interface design, and this absolutely asinine article in the Economist that pissed me off really bad three months ago. In the meantime: when you see this, post a poem. Right?

You Can Have It
Philip Levine

My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labours, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

In 1948 the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors' appointments, bonds
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then the bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,

and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.

Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.

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you know our hearts beat time out very slowly

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:19:18 GMT

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):

Angel

Whatever by sockkpuppett and sisabet
This is Angel's West Hollywood lifestyle. (Whatever!)

Doctor Who/Torchwood

Everything's Not Lost by greensilver
The vid about hugs and hope! Will make your heart grow three sizes, hand to god.

Highlander

Just Like You by sockkpuppett
Duncan/Methos, SO MUCH FUN.

Merlin

10,000 Nights by mamoru22
Arthur and Merlin are failboats in love with each other, the end!

NCIS

The Clapping Song by LithiumDoll
Celebrating 5 years of "inappropriate touching" on NCIS \o/

Psych

"White" & Nerdy by talitha78
From the vidder's notes: Like Gus, I am a nerd of color in a society where nerdiness is frequently coded as "white." With this vid, I want to subvert that stereotype, and hopefully have some lulz along the way. I'll just say that a) herein the stereotype is completely, BRILLIANTLY subverted, and b) THERE ARE MANY LULZ ALONG THE WAY.

Stargate: Atlantis

Another Sunday by jescaflowne
I think it helps if you (like me) have a 100% unironic love for We Built This City on Rock and Roll, BUT I suppose it could work even if you only love it ironically (if you don't love it at all, I'm pretty sure you're dead inside). Contains all the amazingly cheesetastic special effects. No, I mean ALL OF THEM. It is AMAZING.

Atlantis! by Clucking Belles
Oklahoma! As enacted by the population of Atlantis!

Rumble by astolat and cesperanza
West Side Story! As enacted by the population of Atlantis! THE QUESTION MARK OMG.

Stargate: SG-1

I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker by kuwdora
In the words of bipagan: It's a Sams-centric Stargate SG1 vid to the Sandi Thom song "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker." Yes, that's right. I said Sams, with an extra s. It's from the point of view of all the alternate Sams and how they wish they were our Sam. And our Sam is the best Sam. Also functions beautifully as a love letter to the show and its universe.

Copacabana by barkley and destina
Idk, the best constructed reality vid OF ALL TIME?? Barry Manilow! Don't be a hater!

Fancy by barkley
Daniel Jackson might have born just plain white trash, but Fancy IS his name.

SG-1/SGA

Cartoon Heroes by mamoru22
Made from tons of footage from extras and behind-the-scenes of both sets, SO bouncy and joyful and RIDICULOUS and true to the genre and the spirit of the shows. I already warned for earworms, right?

Up

Fireflies by talitha78
Dug the Dog. From the vidder's notes: This vid is the very definition of self-indulgence. I wanted to vid a cute source to a cute song, and so I did. I'm not sure it hangs together perfectly, but I can't be bothered with the niceties of narrative structure when it come to this vid. It's about sunshine and puppies, people! SUNSHINE AND PUPPIES.

The West Wing

The Smartest People In The World sache8
A tribute to seven years of physical comedy, set to Chumbawumba's Tumbthumping. YES.

Real People

Say Hey (I Love You) by sdwolfpup (The Obamas)
I don't want to write a love song for the world / I just want to write a song about a boy and a girl. Barack and Michelle Obama: A Love Story. :D

Beautiful dirty rich by astolat (Adam Lambert)
Adam Lambert's American Idol experience as narrated by Lady Gaga. I've never even SEEN American Idol. There are sparkly stars and the most amazing movement/beat matchups, and the vocal stylings of Lady Gaga, but what REALLY gets me every time are his little thumbs at the end.

Multifandom

I Enjoy Being a Girl by absolutedestiny
Sydney Bristow, Starbuck, Veronica Mars, Zoe, and Buffy kick ass (like they do) against lyrics such as When I have a brand new hairdo / With my eyelashes all in curl, / I float as the clouds on air do, / I enjoy being a girl!

Make Your Own Kind of Music by barkley
An ode to all the characters we love who sing their own special songs (even if nobody else sings along). ♥

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you are the habit i can't seem to kick

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:10:32 GMT

On the glorious occasion of the anniversary of her birth, silentfire and I went to see Sherlock Holmes.

Let's break this down:

❡ Robert Downey, Jr. is still the best part of every movie.

❡ Yes, even the movies in which he does not appear. Perhaps especially those.

❡ I like that it was so obviously a Guy Ritchie film, with his trademark cinematography and the stylized fight scenes. I personally liked the device of describing the action in slow motion before watching it at full speed; it was a good way of marrying Holmes's quick, detached intellect and analysis and observation to the role of Holmes as a fighter. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!), in the books he was pretty much the Platonic ideal of the cerebral ectomorph and not very physical, but a) it's a movie, b) it's a Guy Ritchie movie!, and c) I 110% support RDJ taking off his shirt early and often.

ETA: Thanks to both smallbeer and effex for telling me that Holmes DOES canonically have expert boxing (and other fighting) knowledge and skills and could—and indeed did—get quite physical! smallbeer went on to say that Conan Doyle was himself a boxing fan, and thus fannishness begets fannishness and here we all are. \o/

❡ Oh hey, there were women in this movie! I liked both of them! Mary had agency and intelligence and humor and didn't take any shit from Holmes, and didn't play the part of the jealous girlfriend even though she would have been well within her rights. Also she ships Holmes/Watson. Irene Adler was completely faaaaabulous, I am totally in love with her. And I'm in love with the fact that she and Holmes were not a couple! Fascinated by each other, stimulated by each other, fond of each other, but not involved with each other. They were platonic equals in a way male-female leads rarely ever get to be.

❡ I've seen Jude Law in surprisingly few film roles over the past decade¹, and I guess I've always had a neutral-to-negative opinion of him, not helped by the thing with the nanny which made him out to be an enormous ass, but he was FABULOUS in this, so fabulous that I honestly forgot it was Jude Law and just saw him as Watson. And omg Watson is AMAZING. He is brilliant and beautiful and almost unbearably dapper, he has a gambling addiction and an old war wound and A SWORD IN HIS WALKING STICK, your argument is invalid!

❡ Clearly Watson is the original genius wrangler, but he is Holmes's equal: he has his own motivations and personality and he goes toe-to-toe with Holmes and sometimes he wins. Unlike today's TV geniuses², Holmes doesn't simply need Watson around to be his foil and run interference for him with the mundanes, he wants Watson around because he both likes and loves him. Leading us to:

❡ They are so gay for each other! They are so—I can't even articulate it, it's like saying THERE IS A MYSTERY IN THIS MOVIE AND THEY SOLVE IT. It was basically as canonical and textual as Holmes's drug use (which was never mentioned explicitly in the movie either, but I think a fun game on re-watch will be pinpointing all the scenes in which Holmes is high as a kite). I mean, it's basically what the entire emotional plot of the movie was ABOUT. Holmes doesn't want Watson to move out, Holmes is insanely jealous of Watson's fiancée, Holmes steals Watson's clothes so he can sleep with them under his pillow until they don't smell like him anymore. Mary says to Holmes, of Watson, "I know you care for him as much as I do," and she's about to marry the guy. By the end of the movie it seems clear that they have come to some sort of mutually agreeable polyamorous arrangement.

❡ silentfire and I actually got into a debate over whether Holmes and Watson are the most married, or whether they're merely in, say, the top three, with e.g. Jim and Blair who not only shared rooms and solved crime together, but ALSO had a spiritual telepathic soul bond, and Ray and Fraser who literally rode off into the sunset together. Perhaps this is a job for a poll!

❡ YOU MEANS US. Is this already the name of the Sherlock Holmes (2009) fic comm??

❡ Radio waves! AMAZING. I think everyone will be using them in the future.

Footnotes:
Including Closer, a movie about extraordinarily unlikeable characters; I ♥ Huckabees, in which he has the world's worst American accent; and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow omg lollll, a movie I had totally forgotten about until just now when I checkd his iMDB page. Also Road to Perdition, in which he was really good!

With the notable exception of Shawn and Gus, the only M/M (rather than M/F) genius/wrangler relationship currently on television. If you haven't already, see thelana's original post on the topic and its subsequent comments for a great exploration of the trend.

In conclusion: A++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN

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precious metals, heirlooms, fur, tobacco products

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:59:10 GMT

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.

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hope i get a harmonica

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:55:31 GMT

❧ 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

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

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:27:49 GMT

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.

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

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:12:30 GMT

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

Step One

Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post (it'll be public) so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two

Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:

If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it.

You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

My list is below! For my mailing address, you can email me at alibisandwine (at) gmail.

Paid LJ/DW time.

Sam/Callen NCIS: LA stories omg ;___;

A replacement battery for my (white, 13") Macbook, which has completely given up the ghost after more than three years and way more than 300 cycles.

An external hard drive for backup and vidding purposes.

An iPod Touch. I mean, I'd dearly love an iPhone, but I couldn't afford the fees even if I managed to get one in my hot little hands.

Cardigans. Any style (boyfriend, grandpa, cascading, curved hem, traditional, etc.), material, pattern, color, and especially texture. I wear around a large (US 12-14), in regular or petite.

Jewelry and accessories. Headbands and fascinators; bracelets, necklaces, earrings, watches (functional or otherwise), cocktail rings (size 8 or 9?); anything interesting. Handmade or costume, metal or cloth or plastic or glass. Gloves and fingerless gloves. Scarves. Socks.

LUSH products. Anything for dry/sensitive skin, e.g. Dream Cream, Skin Drink Moisturizer, Aqua Mirabilis Body Butter, Angels on Bare Skin Cleanser, etc.

A job. Oh my god, a JOB. Or a line on bona fide online data entry or proofreading gigs (I have lots of internet access and time, I have a good eye for detail, and I type really fast!). But really, a JOB.

Winning lottery numbers. A get-out-of-debt-free! card. Superpowers. A do-over.

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said all their names three times

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:21:52 GMT

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.

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ten years on the coast, figuring out the weather

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 07:55:56 GMT

NCIS(gay): 1.09: Random on Purpose

Wow, the opening for this is just one overlong scene of this guy ~~angsting about his wife leaving him and taking their kid with her. He is literally standing in a dark empty room staring out a window at what we're supposed to believe is a torrential rainstorm (in Los Angeles? really? and everything was dry by the morning? and it didn't compromise the crime scene? even though the killer went in and out through the window? AMAZING) holding his daughter's sad little abandoned stuffed animals for THIRTY SECONDS (listen, it feels longer than it sounds), and then he is suddenly brutally murdered, surprise! Finally, god.

Okay, so we tune back in to headquarters in the morning, the camera tight on Callen's face, and he has apparently been frozen with surprise and is assessing some sort of threat that we can't see yet, his eyes flicking warily from side to side. Sam and Kensi join him and are also taken aback, and we discover that the bullpen conference table has been replaced with . . . TWO TABLES!! These are meant to be what passes for "desks" in Los Angeles I guess, and they have been set up with six chairs and seating has been assigned for everyone, along with phones and binders and inboxes and little reading lamps!

And is that . . . a hatstand? And a wrought iron chandelier? With WAX CANDLES?? Okay, sure! (ETA: Upon closer inspection, they do not appear to be wax candles. But it's still ridiculous!)

So Sam assures G that "it's safe to go in", and the three of them investigate the situation:

SAM: Assigned seats and sharpened #2 pencils, yay!
KENSI: WTF where's all my stuff?
CALLEN: CHANGE D:

Nate got a haircut, hooray! Oh, and Hetty is a ninja again.

THE WRITERS: Blah blah plot, blah blah possible espionage?! blah blah NANNYCAM LOLLLL.

ERIC: [McEllon, the dead guy] worked on super-cavitation, really cool technology. Puts a bubble around a submarine, it quadruples its speed.
DOM: From twenty-five knots top speed, fully submerged, to one hundred knots.

Because twenty-five times four equals one hundred, and that's what "quadruple" means, boys and girls! To multiply by four! Does anyone have any questions? Let's try another one!

So as Sam and G walk into the crime scene they're pulling on gloves, which is remarkable in and of itself, because so often people on the teevee don't wear gloves at crime scenes! but instead of the standard white (or blue/purple nitrile), they are BLACK LATEX GLOVES which makes it look less like a crime scene and more like a prelude to fisting:

And then they reenact the murder:

CALLEN: So McEllon hears a noise, and he comes in.
SAM: *comes up behind Callen* Killer takes him from behind, no struggle.
CALLEN: McEllon's six-foot, so the killer's strong, he's quiet—
SAM: —knows how to use a knife. *grabs Callen's shoulder and mimes slicing his throat open*

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SCENE IS AMAZING.

Next, Sam and G have this adorable little scene where they both hang up their phones at the same time and turn around to face each other at the same time and start talking at the same time. And then they pause, and start talking at the same time again. And then Sam crosses his arms and tries to look stern but CANNOT MANAGE IT, seriously, it's like trying to be mad at your puppy:

So then Kensi walks up and, unprompted, flips a coin for them to decide who goes first, and declares Callen the winner. Callen opens his mouth, shuts it again, and asks her if he was heads or tails. Kensi says, "I'm not telling you." Then they dump their respective info, and Sam plays the part of the Republican mouthpiece. Callen snarks at Kensi, and she tells him, "you were tails, for the record", and Sam smirks at them. I AM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP.

Back at the "office", Sam and G have been assigned seats that are as far away from each other as possible:

CALLEN: It feels . . . weird.
SAM: I like it. I'm over here, you're way over there . . .
CALLEN: THAT'S WHY IT FEELS WEIRD :(

THE WRITERS: Blah blah plot, blah blah LET'S BRING ABBY TO L.A. TO CATCH A SERIAL KILLER WITH ~FORENSICS~

So in her "spare time" Abby has been tracking what she believes is a serial killer who leaves no forensic evidence, and she thinks McEllon is his latest victim; everyone else is extreeeeemely skeptical, so while she does her thing, the rest of the team does the due diligence and investigates McEllon's widow. They track her to Venice Beach—

SAM: Five years married to a buttoned-down Navy guy. She splits, moves down here to get a taste of the craaazies.
CALLEN: I used to live here.
SAM: Well, you and crazy speaks for itself.

—and espy her with a boyfriend! And her not even divorced yet! Callen is scandalized:

CALLEN: Did you see other partners after I was shot?
SAM: Oh, no, I'm a loyal guy, G.

I AM STILL NOT MAKING THIS UP.

While they're bantering and keeping an eye on the boyfriend, Callen is rifling through the sunglasses at one of the stands, and comes up with these:

LOLLLLLLL CHRIS O'DONNELL. Do you think that was ad libbed? I think maybe.

Then the boyfriend starts walking away:

CALLEN: Now, is that a casual walking away, or an "I see two guys that may be law enforcement" walking away?
SAM: I might look like law enforcement.
CALLEN: Oh yeah? What do I look like?
SAM: Like you grew up here.

smallbeer mentioned a few episodes ago that everyone tends to treat Callen "like a beloved cartoon bomb, the round kind with the fuse that was always in danger of going off and blowing Wile. E. Coyote to smithereens", which is hilarious and also true, so I love seeing Sam give him shit here, because it makes me think that Sam knows when to tease him and when to treat him with kidgloves ~~and when to heal him with his magical cock~~.

THE WRITERS: Blah blah plot, blah blah LET'S KIDNAP ABBY ;___;

ANYWAY, the widow and the boyfriend are both innocent. Abby has indeed proven her phantom serial killer theory (seriously, she named the killer "The Phantom") with ~forensics; to kill time between plot points and Sam/G banter, Eric (Abby's #1 fanboy) invites her out to a club for a drink, and it's all horribly awkward and mottsy but Abby's always adorable. MEANWHILE, back at the "office" the team actually employs logic and reasoning and they conclude that the killer deliberately killed McEllon so NCIS would get involved and Abby would come to L.A.; they are proven correct when Abby is stabbed with a hypo and stuffed into a van and taken away!! Everyone goes into overdrive to get her back, because a) she's Abby! and b) they rightly fear the wrath of Gibbs, who is immediately en route with the team.

Sam and G go back to the club ("Steampunk"), whose clientele are of course sooo snooty and unwilling to help, and apparently I'm supposed to believe that Sam doesn't know what a Muggle is? WTF, show!

So they manage to trace the killer's phone to McEllon's law firm, and it turns out to be one of thirty phones the firm bought and distributed internally:

CALLEN: The law firm's our only lead. We go undercover.

. . . But you have a closed pool of thirty suspects! How hard can it be to narrow that down? Don't you have enough evidence and urgency to easily obtain a warrant? YOU GUYS JUST LIKE DRESSING UP AND ROLEPLAYING, ADMIT IT.

Then there are many tedious scenes with Abby and the utterly asinine killer, and Nate and Hetty and Eric back at the "office" watching the many tedious scenes via the streaming video that Eric has managed to hack into, while Sam and G and Kensi and Dom race around the city trying to find the building where she's being held. Abby finger-spells clues (construction noise!) and warnings (the doors are booby-trapped!) which Eric can read because he knows sign! of course! Anyway, the doors are booby-trapped, so Sam and G go for the skylight, and they get up to the roof and just stare at it for a minute with their guns drawn:

CALLEN: Miami?
SAM: Miami was half the height and we still got all busted up.
CALLEN: One of us may land soft enough and get the shot.
SAM: Yeah, if one of us is Peter Pan.

So Sam lowers Callen down using the fire hose! Day saved! Hooray!

And then they had sex, the end.

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?

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for a girl who was born in an oil drum

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:29:26 GMT

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!⁽¹⁾

The minute Hetty uttered the word FISHCAM, I had to pause the video to roll around on my bed giggling helplessly for ten minutes, because FISHCAM omg. GAME OVER. The writers obviously just devote 98% of their energy to the gorgeous Sam/Callen banter, and then are like, "fuck, well, blah blah plot, blah blah militia?! blah blah ANGSTY JONAS BROTHER ;___; blah blah SAM + G 4EVA OMG! blah blah FISHCAM LOLLLL."

SPEAKING OF gorgeous Sam/Callen banter:

Sam: Positive reinforcement has been proven to work.
Callen: I prefer negative reinforcement. The silent treatment, the cold shoulder; you know, you make people squirm, they'll perform.
Sam: It's also an acceptable form of human conduct.
Callen: Which I want nothing to do with. Kinda like IM-ing, or popping-and-locking.
Sam: Whatever. It's still the best operations report you'll ever see, whether you want to admit it or not.
Callen: Let me see this. *pages through report* Wow, this is nice. You got the color-coded tabs, you got the highlighted bullet points . . . wait a minute. Did your mom help you with this?
Sam: I warned you about bringing up my mom.
Callen: Very nice. I'm sure Hetty will give you a gold star.
Sam: Yeah.
Callen: I can't wait to see what you do for your science fair project. Maybe we oughta build a volcano.
Sam: Maybe I should just—
Callen: —throw me in one?
Sam: *huffs a laugh* That's not what I was going to say.
Renko: Well, glad to see that you two are closer than ever.

From this conversation we can observe that a) Sam and G are SO OBVIOUSLY MARRIED, Jesus Christ, SILENT TREATMENT AND THE COLD SHOULDER; b) Sam continues to patiently teach Callen how to behave among these "humans"; c) COLOR-CODED TABS OMG; d) Sam was an A+ student, while Callen was too busy being a Dickensian orphan and acting out⁽²⁾ for attention, any attention, god I'm so LONELY ;___; to care about something like SCHOOL, whatEVER (*cries*); e) other people continue to marvel at, but otherwise not remark upon, how married Sam and G are [see point (a) above].

Meanwhile, Hetty continues to be a ninja:

Hetty: The man against the glass is a Marine Reservist, who worked at an armory at Camp Pendleton.
Callen: *hits the mute button* Does anybody else think this is weird?
Nate: *NODS*
Eric: Oh, yeah, we all think it's weird.
Callen: Just checking. *hits the mute button*
Hetty: I heard that, Mr. Callen.
Eric: . . . HOW?

Does Nate remind anyone else of Clippy, the MS Word Office Assistant? It looks like you're investigating a paranoid extremist group! Would you like an expository psychological profile?

Every part of Kensi defending herself and kicking the shit out of that guy was awesome, except the part where they couldn't actually let her finish the job without being "rescued" by Renko, who then proceeded to sexually harass her in the middle of an arrest. But Kensi was awesome!

Sam was extremely convincing as the MP, but Callen was not even PRETENDING to look, dress, or act like any variety of Marine. In fact, Callen infiltrating the militia camp looks like he's channelling every time John Sheppard was ever captured off-world, but with the bitchiness turned up to eleven, it is delightful:

Callen: PLEASE tell me we're not going camping. Are we going camping?
Riley: No, we're not camping.
Callen: Because I hate camping.
[ . . . ]
Callen: Is there gonna be a bathroom where we're going?
Riley: Go in the woods.
Callen: I knew it. I save your life, you take me camping. At least where I come from, they got toilets! And TV, and fun!

So Sam busts into the camp and poses as an ATF agent and bluffs his way into a "negotiation", sure; I've seen this episode before. But the tension between him and G when he actually gets to him, the intensity in his face and all of his body language when he grips his shoulders and shakes him, and the way he leaves one hand resting on his shoulder, holy shit. I honestly expected Sam to keep moving forward and KISS HIM, or at least crush him in a hug; LL Cool J is fucking awesome, the fact that there is in fact no crushing hug or hard kiss on the mouth is perceptible in its absence. It is as hugely, invisibly present as the unspoken conclusion to Callen and Jay's heart-to-heart at the end, the one that goes like this:

Callen: So I spoke with the Special-Agent-In-Charge. And he spoke with the U.S. Attorney. And they said you could go home—for now. Do you have anywhere you can go?
Jay: *crying* Can I call my mom?
Callen: *whips cellphone out of back pocket*
Jay: 626-555-0110
Callen: Least I know how to dial a cellphone.
Jay: Least I'm not going to jail.
Callen: Least I didn't accidentally join a militia.
Jay: Least I finally woke up and saved your behind.
Callen: Yeah. Least you were on my side. *holds ringing cellphone up to Jay's ear*
Female voice over the phone: (unintelligible)
Jay: *crying harder* Mom?
Callen: AT LEAST YOU HAVE A MOM. ;___________; Also how do you get your face to do that?? I can only cry on the inside.

For the record, I am still completely in love with the fact that bad-ass, muscle-bound, super-cool former-SEAL Sam Hanna is written as both brilliant and a total nerd, the guy who COLOR-CODES THE TABS in his operational reports, and gets super-excited when his partner abides by S.O.P., and comes up with obscure historical military trivia⁽³⁾ while he is being held hostage by psychotic militiamen. I feel like we know a lot about him, even though we haven't been told much about him. P.S. Dear writers, TELL US MORE. I have seen the rest of your show, it is not actually possible that you're just being purposely ~subtle, because you do not actually know what that MEANS.

You know Sam totally has a color-coded tab for "times when my partner was suicidally reckless." I'm pretty sure "Nice job, Special Agent Hanna" is not-so-sekrit code for "I LOVE YOU"; that way Sam's "Ahh, you said it. Feel good?" response makes 1000% more sense (and is proportionately more awesome). Domestic shot of a couple at home at the end of a long workday, reading the paper and napping on the couch. And scene.

I was out with Kansas and M. last night, and I mentioned how gay this show was, and Kansas asked if it was okay to call things "gay" now, and I was like, no, you don't understand, I'm not saying the show is stupid or campy, I mean it is literally gay, in that it is about characters of the same gender who are attracted to each other in romantic and sexual ways; "gay" is still not a synonym for shitty.

I'm convinced that the discrepancy in the foster homes timeline was due to one or more lengthy stretches in juvenile detention centers.

Btw, Wikipedia warns us that military historian and magician Richard Stokes has examined Jasper Maskelyne's story and documented "many chronological inaccuracies and unsubstantiated events, concluding that Maskelyne's wartime exploits have been heavily fictionalised", which makes it SO PERFECT for this show.

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