Walking from the elevator to the office this morning:

Guy 1: You know you've missed me the last couple of days.
Guy 2: Yeah. Like a hemorrhoid. [beat] Like a bloody hemorrhoid.
Guy 1: You just had to go the extra mile and say "bloody," didn't you.

On the phone just now:

Me: My horoscope here says that I should share myself with someone I adore today. It says that will increase our cosmic connection. Do you feel more cosmically connected to me right now?
Dad: Yes, I do. [beat] Or maybe it's indigestion.

In other news, clipping is almost done! I may have a draft of this by Thanksgiving.

Saw two more movies over the weekend and have the next-to-last one tonight,* all of which I will post about at some point. So far the first was the best.

Last week I realized that I was stuck on the vid I was working on not just because it'll take a lot of sittings to do, being about four minutes long, but because it's depressing and angry, and that's not the headspace I need to be in when I get home from work these days. So I switched to the happy SGA team love vid I thought of almost two years ago that's set to a silly song from Oliver!, and that has been going swimmingly. I brainstormed Wednesday evening, outlined on my lunch break on Thursday, started marking the times Thu-Fri evenings, and started clipping yesterday. Ended up making 113 clips (!) just from seasons three and four, which is already 20-something more than was in all of "Halloween." It took the whole day. But it's going to be great. I mean, it's already great, going through the episodes again and sampling favorite moments, like John and the BABY, which always kills me -- or finding new favorite moments, like John gently helping Teyla out of her infirmary bed in "Sunday."

The show actually seems good when you do that.

Vidding unfortunately has to be done between less fun tasks like going to work, doing outside-of-work work, feeding myself, sleeping, and looking for new jobs. (Vidding and sleeping in particular are unmixy things. I have yet to figure out why an evening of vidding leads to insomnia.) However, I still have Fannish Goals for the remainder of 2009:

- Finish this vid
- Finish the SGA dancing WIP for flashfic amnesty
- Finish one of two House WsIP (MRI or secret crossover)

"Find tonight's episode of House" should go on there, too, since I'll be missing it.

*ETA: Or not; the time was switched, I got a refund, I can watch House and go to bed on time. Yay!

Can someone tell me a moment where Lorne does something heroic / helpful / self-sacrificial, preferably for another member of the expedition?

I don't mean this sarcastically -- I'd like it for a vid. All I can think of is him being sweet to Teyla in "Spoils of War."

I tried a recipe for avgolemono soup last night. Scrambled eggs only happened a little bit. The soup isn't quite as good as I'd hoped—I would definitely cut out the butter, maybe add more corn starch to thicken it up, and I already one-and-a-halved the lemon juice... maybe I should have stuck with the recipe I linked to in that post last year—but it's still eatable. And, having had to separate the eggs, I've now got some egg whites for an omelette this morning.

ETA: Ha! Look what was featured in today's Washingtonian email.

Maybe all this Greekness is a sign I should work on a particular WIP later, since I have the holiday off. (!) To vid, or to fic?

.

Last night I went to see Disco and Atomic War (Disko ya tuumasõda, Estonia, 2009, dir. Jaak Kilmi), a documentary-slash-comedy arguing that Western television that was snuck into Estonia via Finland from the 1960s to the 1980s helped bring down the Soviet Union by showing viewers how much better their lives could be.

( History, media, ridiculous US/USSR battles, and fannishness. )

Anyway. Here is a dubbed trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Ocuy6LsDw

All I knew about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor, 2009, Sweden, dir. Niels Arden Oplev, based on the book by the late Stieg Larsson) was this picture and a one-sentence summary in the AFI European Union Film Showcase booklet. It was a gorgeous picture—the facial structure reminded me of kabal42's—and I thought the film might have some stuff in it about punk or goth or gender politics.

But wow. It was far more than that, and it was excellent. It was tight, it was long, it was gorgeous, it was understated, it was powerful, it was superbly acted. You cared about the characters, and you had to work just hard enough to understand everything that was going on, staying engaged without getting lost. It's worthy of the $100 million it's already grossed in Europe. I'll be surprised if it doesn't get nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award.

In many ways a traditional murder mystery, it was also about ( warning: possibly triggery )

The shift in title from Men Who Hate Women to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is also appropriate since, apparently, in the transformation to the screen the main character changed from investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) to hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who I agree was more interesting. The film review I linked to with that picture of her said ( mild spoilers ).

I could say stuff about the plot and the amusing showcase of different winter coats and the reference to Nazism in Sweden, and the film's celebration of thorough research, and how all the hacking should have been outdated but managed not to be for the most part, and how the audience chuckled sometimes when the Swedish was close enough to the English subtitles to be recognized (like "mord" for "kill")—even though it's got nothing on Dutch—and so on. Or how the director had a fabulous accent that reminded me alternately of Vincent Perez and Sebastian Roché, even though they're Swiss and French and the director is Danish.

Instead, will just say that the film is due out in the U.S. in March, and it comes highly recommended. Fans of the series in the audience were excited to hear that the second two books were already in production for TV and are now being prepared for feature release -- same cast, different director -- and that if this one does well, they might be released stateside as well.

*

One down, five to go this month. Stay tuned.

Did I seriously just see a Volvo commercial using Twilight clips?

I did. WhatDrivesEdward.com.

Good God. And there were New Moon Halloween chocolates in the discount bin at the supermarket.

...There were also Harry Potter action figures, and the old Lestat-on-Broadway website had the same cheesy music, so I guess my fandoms aren't ones to talk.

I got to hang out for most of the day in a video production studio, and felt no hesitation in asking the guys questions relevant to vidding. And work. But also vidding.

That was a great change of pace. But since the rest of my tasks had to be squeezed in afterwards, I got home almost three hours late. I'm doomed to miss fangirl Fridays forever.

Speaking of vidding, with two free weekends and Veterans Day on the horizon, my fannish goals are to work on either the SGA flashfic or the House WIP from like three years ago that has been late for as many Halloweens, or to work on the SGA vid-in-progress that has a Statement to Make. All gen.

It's been strange and wonderful and a little angsty lately as I slowly open myself up again to a wider variety of interests than I've let myself focus on the last couple of years because of work and school and new career. For example, poetry podcasts at Slate. There is Robert Pinsky -- once upon a time I could do a killer Pinsky impression -- reading an old favorite of mine, "Jubilate Agno," a poem so wonderfully weird that I'm breaking my "no cats on LJ" rule to recommend it to you now if you don't know it. I miss poetry so much.

ETA: And nobody told me that was the wrong link! Fixed now. It had linked to another neat article at Slate, about the Levi's commercials that've been using Whitman poems.

And I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, finally. Beautiful and horrific, and messes with your head with its unresolved arguments about storytelling and truth and war and writing. Is what he wrote true? What is "true"? Does it matter? Why? Just don't read before bed, alone, in the dark, like I kept doing. The ghosts feel closer that way. Or actually, maybe that's the perfect way to do it.

Starting to watch movies again, too. TV has lately been good for stuff like New York City Serenade (Sebastian!) (dir. Frank Whaley, RSL's old buddy), Ordinary People, a documentary about Bon Jovi, and an Alien marathon. Now the nearby American Film Institute is having a European film festival, and I think I'll pick up some tickets. Any recommendations from the AFI calendar? (Euro are in blue.) I am thinking some combination of Piggies, Dragon, Parnassus, John Rabe, Infer, Disco, maybe Bluebeard or Ander.

Music, only a little. There aren't many radio stations in the area. At least at this new job you can stream radio, so I've been putting the classical station on quietly in the background. (Once upon a time, I thought of comparing fanfiction to radio, where gen was classical -- people keep thinking they don't think like it, but when they start listening to it, it's hard to go back to the other stuff -- darkfic was the heavy metal/alt rock stations, fluff was easy listening, meta was NPR or talk radio, and the everyday forgettable sort of average stories were the pop stations. And of course a ton of them are love songs.)

Anyway, took a walk down memory lane this week when Richard Shindell rolled into town(ish) on his annual fall tour. Fellow folk singer Antje Duvekot opened. I hadn't heard of her, nor had I heard of last year's opener, Caroline Herring, but from now on I'm trusting his taste because I enjoyed them both and loved at least one song from each ("Sex Bandaid" from Antje, which I sadly can't find on YouTube, and "Paper Gown" by Caroline).

Richard's show was maybe my least favorite of the times I've seen him, front-loaded on the new album and heavy with the more repetitive, blander stuff. Blander to me, anyway; those songs always get requested when he takes requests. He forgot lyrics more than usual, too. Still, he's always a pleasure to listen to. He did do "Mavis," and a punchy minor-chord rendition of the usually bluegrass "Waiting for the Storm" made the whole show worth it. If he'd recorded it that way, the song would be in my top ten. I wish I could find a recording of that version.

I know I've pushed his stuff on you before, but here is some more. Or rather, here is a lot of it again. hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=W082KLK6 (change the x's)

( Zip contains: )

ETA: Oh, Dee, duh, I was going to include "Fishing," one of the great extended metaphors of modern folk. Says me.

Wow, this post took much longer to write than it should have.

Why didn't I know it was this easy to make buffalo chicken? I never need to pay $8 for a ranch-drowned sandwich again. Mmmm.

(1:3 butter:hot sauce, cook chicken, pour sauce over it. Devour.)

Pluses of late:
+ Heard back today from one of my fave high school teachers, whom I emailed in a fit of nostalgia over the weekend, not knowing if the address I had was right or if he was even still alive
+ There was money in the mail for me when I got home
+ Dragged myself out of self-pity/lethargy last night to see an out-of-town friend and a group of locals for a couple of hours
+ Confirmed there will be friends and pie over Thanksgiving weekend in NY
+ Reading a (Reboot) Kirk/Pike WIP
+ I have not yet killed either of the house plants
+ The leaves, O the leaves, and the weather, after the rain

Mmm, harvest.

October is the best part of the best season of the year. The leaves change, the air crisps, the sky turns an intense blue. There are harvests and pumpkins and apples and baked goods and cider and hay and Halloween.

The rain and my cold notwithstanding, this morning I drove out to experience as many of the above as possible. About an hour into Virginia from D.C. is a century-plus-old family-run farm that was listed among many in the local entertainment magazine this week. I liked its name—Crooked Run Orchard—and its website, so I chose that one. Even though once again I managed to miss peak apple-picking season, I did pass some beautiful orange- and red-tipped trees on the drive out into the hills, like Bob Ross paintings; saw the Blue Ridge Mountains not too far in the distance; walked around in the muddly, thistly pumpkin and gourd fields; and came back with:

- Three medium-sized pumpkins for cooking—two green-striped ones the guys working the farm stand said were delicious, and a Blue Moon variety, also for cooking, because, hi, it's blue;
- A butternut squash;
- Some string beans, picked from between rows of sunflowers; and
- A half-gallon of cider. Yum.

I was going to make an apple pie, but for lack of apples, plans changed to pumpkin pie. Then, lacking a rolling pin and table space and oomph, that became pumpkin bread instead. Have never tried making it before, but I like eating it, so that should work out. One of two loaves is in the oven riiiiight now. It smells divine.

How about an autumnal picspam?





( This way. )


And before I forget: Recipes welcome for butternut squash soup and pumpkin pie! Or other things to do with pumpkins -- since I've used only one of the three and just half of it went into two bread loaves.

I am in a lousy mood, I despair that I will ever enjoy this new job, and I think I'm coming down with a cold. To complete the quadrangle of unhappiness, I'm finally doing a friends-cut. It's been a long time coming, but it's really hard at the same time.

I'm doing this because my friends list is my reading list (I don't have any filters set up), and I need to cut back and clean up. The journals I've let go are generally because you're not there anymore, you post multiple times a day, our interests have diverged, or I keep running into spoilers. This doesn't mean I won't come by from time to time to see how you're doing.

Chances are we haven't talked in a really long time, but if you are sad (or mad) and would like to be added back because you're reading my locked posts, etc., just let me know. The list will probably be in flux for the next little while anyway.

And if you're hurt, I'm sorry. :(

Just a link, and a couple of minor things.

( Read more... )

The end. Work to do now.

Since last we met, in fragments:

- Went to Boston, had a wonderful time catching up with friends and classmates and faculty and family, was remotivated, came back. You may now call me Master. \o/

- Had a minor SGA moment of joy. Through no influence on my part, went with a friend to the Daedalus bar on Friday night and with different friends to the Asgard pub on Saturday night. Also started the trip at gate C4.

- Got a cool pleather motorcycle jacket that is unlike anything I've ever owned, and I like it. With my non-ponytail haircut and professional clothes, I feel all grown-up like. Except for how half the reason I got the jacket was that I left my other (worn out, broken, nine-year-old) jacket somewhere in Boston.

- Reading V. Hadn't realized previously just how much of a rip-off the setup of Independence Day was. The novelization is by A.C. Crispin, whose ST novels I used to love. This one's plainly written – all plot, no style – but a quick read, and enjoyable in a mindless plane-reading kind of way. I just can't figure out why so much of the first hundred pages or so were taken up with people's mounting concern that the Visitors weren't as human as they looked. Um, of course not; they told you when they arrived in their giant flying saucers from outer space that they're from another planet. "The aliens are hiding something" is one thing, but "the aliens are alien" is another.

- House needs to be on at a different time on a different day. Also, the network needs to stop broadcasting the widescreen without letterboxing, because half the time I can't see people's whole faces.

- Saw and enjoyed The Hours. What a lineup of performances, tight adaptation by the playwright, brilliant and subtle transitions, and Philip Glass's characteristically beautiful score to tie it all together.

- Registered for con_txt.

Or rather, I have no Internet, and I must print documents for my trip tomorrow, for which I am leaving straight from work midday. (Nothing like coming home after another long workday to find that Comcast has crapped out again.) (So how am I online? Ooooh, mysterious.)

Just to say I will be MIA all weekend, a-graduatin'. See you afterwards.

(Also, whence the werewolf LJ-gift?)

I had a lovely dream last night that my favorite high school teacher (who in the dream had been a doctor and was considering returning to his training) leaned over my desk during class and in a fit of affection kissed me on the cheek. It was very sweet and made me wake up happy.

I blame mcsmooch.

The night before, I had a different dream that would've made for a good mcsmooch except I didn't feel like going to the trouble to write it. Sad face. John and Rodney and their son, Finn maybe (from "A Farm in Iowa"), were visiting an air show/museum or something or other, and John was looking forward to seeing this one plane, so after seeing something else in the exhibit in the morning they left to make sure they got to the plane exhibit on time, only it was a wreck reconstructed and not the real thing. John was disappointed, but soon enough Rodney handed him their son, who was just so young and innocent and happy that John couldn't help but be cheered. Which was also sweet.

For the kid, I blame endless promotions of Dexter.

Anyway, ( a list of things from tonight's House: )

Apologies to anyone I may have put off by replying with flat/terse comments or not replying at all lately. I have been feeling crappy about myself these last few days, for no sufficient reason, other than Changes Are Coming And I Angst. Also the power went out for an hour in the middle of the night when I'd finally had a chance to get some decent sleep. But rather than get self-loathing all over you, here is a random collection of good things:

+ My little SGA tentacles vidlet won an Arbitrary Mod Prize at kink_bingo! I love how the mods are totally transparent about the subjectivity of that half of the awards process, and am pleased as punch to have pleased them. With tentacles.

+ I also earned a travel fellowship to the conference I'm going to next month, which is super cool since the flight and hotel etc. will now not come out of my paycheck.

+ Haircut this weekend. 's been five years since I last did something interesting. Hopefully this curly-hair place will know what to do with me. Also the National Book Festival, and an evening with the Laundrys.

+ Girl!Spock/Kirk (Reboot, as you may surmise by the fact that I've read it) virgin fic.

+ Enjoying the half-dozen episodes of Dexter I've caught since synn was here. He has some good, dry one-liners, and his sister is gorgeous. And there's Darla. What a crossover that would be, Darla and Dexter. Also, the opening credits look like the ones for True Blood, the style and the grotesque-within-the-quotidian theme. Anyway, with that and DS9 DVDs, it's been nice to watch shows that hold my interest the whole way through and don't have any commercials. She says, while the Vampire Diaries trails off into WalMart and diet ads.

+ Meme is still open.

My favorite quote from the newspapers this weekend came from an article in USA Today about the flu season. CDC director Thomas Frieden said: "What will happen in the coming weeks and months will only become clear in the weeks and months ahead."

I'm pretty sure I get what he meant -- we can't predict how the season will go -- but wow.

*

So, House. The first thing I want to say, for usomitai and others wary of emotional spoilers, is that I don't think you can judge an episode by whether I'm posting about it. Whether I write up a commentary is going to depend more on how much time I have and how tired I feel than on the nature or intensity of my emotional reaction to the episode.

( The rest is behind this spoiler cut. )

Which meant that yesterday I got to sit less than twenty feet away from him. Times like these, it's nice to have a ritzy mall within easy driving distance so Tim Gunn can come to co-host runway events during Fashion Week. Happiness.

Having RSVP'd meant that we (deelaundry came along to see what the fuss is about) got seats, while others gathered behind the roped-off chairs and along the surrounding balconies. They had a better view of the models since the runway was on the floor rather than on a platform, but they were not sitting twenty feet from my future gay husband, so. Tradeoff.

( A few pictures: )

Highlights included:

- Mangled but sincere happy new year wishes ("S'shana tova").

- Joy the Aussie model flirting nonverbally with him, making exaggerated faces whenever he adjusted her clothes as he and the other co-host demonstrated how to "deconstruct" a dress for work or eveningwear.

- On man-scarves: "It's… a look."

- A story about why there are certain looks you will never see on him, one being man-scarves and another being pocket squares. He said he'll lay out a suit on his bed, tuck a square in the breast pocket and think, "Huh, that looks nice." Then he'll put it on, look in the mirror and think, "I look like an ass." He said he has to take the square out or else he'd go around all day with a little demon in his pocket whispering, "You look like an ass, you look like an ass."

In an answer to someone else during a Q&A after the show, I found out that since "Bravo is currently not speaking to" him, there is, alas, no chance of being on his Guide to Style. Guess I will have to make do with squid shirts and one well-fitting button-down and this adorable messenger bag I forgot to say synn brought me last weekend.

I've never done this meme before, but for whatever reason, I've felt like trying it this week.

1) Comment with a line or two from one of my stories. (Please try to pick one that's got a chance of being identified, as opposed to "She laughed," or "'House!' said Wilson.")

2) I will name the story I think it's from.

3) If I'm wrong, you get to give me a prompt and I'll try to write something based on it. Or, in the likely case that I fail at that, I'll pick a line from one of your fics and you have to guess.

All my fics are tagged, in memories, and on one page here.

synn was here (yay) and synn is gone (boo). I had a really nice time—we always do—and I think she got a good taste of the city in the two days we had, since we either deliberately or inadvertently wound up seeing:

• Thousands of healthcare bill protesters down in Penn Quarter
• The White House (from the outside, on the Rose Garden side)
• The Washington Monument, reflecting pool, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial (from afar) and Korean War Memorial
• Busloads of veterans visiting the WWII memorial
• Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
• Arts festival in Chinatown
• Street fair in Adams Morgan
• "Downtown" Silver Spring
• The stately old stone houses down 16th Street that remind me of the neighborhoods just outside Vancouver
• 9 (semi-Tim Burton post-apocalypse quasi-steampunk CG movie)
• Psych, DS9, Sherlock Holmes, Hellboy II, the Vampire Diaries rerun and Dexter

And of course, eating: Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Chinese, homemade omelets, accidental McDonald's, the natural frozen yogurt I am so glad exists, and probably something I'm forgetting.

And! I now own a squid shirt! One of the street fair vendors was a Baltimore clothesmaker called Squidfire, which makes shirts that were designed for me. They have a series of squids, and happy octopi, and t-rexes with veggies, and LJ friends, and I may put a few items on my holiday wish list.

.

Now it's back to our regular programming. Although there's a slightly surreal series on right now. I don't know if anyone's been following the story about the Yale student who was missing and then found murdered and crammed in a wall on her wedding day, but my family went to the same temple as her fiancé and his family. I haven't kept in touch, but jeez. Poor Jonathan. Poor everyone.

Speaking of articles, has this interview with a medical advisor for House in yesterday's USA Today made the rounds? I've unsubscribed from the fandom comms but I haven't seen it mentioned on any of your journals. It's short, but there are a few interesting bits, like the tiny morsel of info about how advising on the show works.

Thanks a lot, every insurance company I can find in this county, for refusing me two months of health coverage to fill a gap between school and work in case I get hit by a car or stricken with swine flu, all because I had a kidney stone and a scan for what turned out to be a benign growth two and a half years ago.

This is especially irritating coming as it does a day after Obama's speech about the ideal healthcare environment in this country. It may have wanted some substance to back up its ideals, but the moral motivations can't be faulted. Also, he's an excellent speaker.

/politics

Working a lot this week. Tired. A bit demoralized. Have more to do tonight. Dreading an interview tomorrow at which I'm almost certain I'm going to be offered a job. Dreading because I don't know if I want it and I haven't been able to figure it out since this became a possibility more than a month ago. Am probably going to take it anyway, and then deal with whether it's a good fit or not -- and telling my current supervisor, who is expecting me to be around for another several months yet.

But: synn is coming tomorrow for the weekend. There may be a Tim Gunn event in person next weekend. And tonight is the premiere of The Vampire Diaries, which looks just as terrible as every other TV show that utterly misses what makes vampires compelling, but I was obsessed with L.J. Smith for about a month in high school, several years after I knew better, and it'll be really cool to see those characters in whatever mutated hypersexed teenage incarnation on screen.

("I'm going to eat you, Salvatore.")