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The post that kept growing [13 Jul 2009|04:21am]
I spent some QT at DeviantArt today, and realized that I haven't done a Rachel-goes-to-DeviantArt post in two years! A long time ago, I bought the first Queen and Country TPB, but I ended up selling it because I didn't like the art. Now I'm ready to give the series another chance, simply because Rachel keeps pimping it. Recently, I found out that she likes Ex Machina, so now I've got to catch up on that (I've only read through #29). And in the same interview, she rec'd Identity Crisis, so I might have read that, too. (Life so hard.)

I've been watching a lot of TV lately. I'd like to thank [info]bessemerprocess for convincing me to give The Unusuals a try. I devoured it, and it is easily one of the best ensemble dramas I've ever seen. As much as I like Nathan Fillion, it is a goddamn crime that Castle was renewed but The Unusuals was not. My issues with Castle, let me tell you them:

Kate Beckett is not a real character; she is a glorified plot device. She matters in one way: she resists Castle's charms. Unless the writers make Kate believable as something other than a reluctant romantic interest (and having her come to work looking like a raccoon and execute arrest warrants in heels does not make her believable as a cop), the series is untenable. Barring an early cancellation, one day she will cease to be reluctant, and how can you write about a couple when one member is defined by not being a part of said couple? But more than that, the prospect of her relinquishing her reluctance disturbs me. Let me quote this fantastic review of It Happened One Night:
In the Platonic ideal of this type of romantic comedy, two likeable (yet flawed) people come together and clash, but then each of them grows a little, straightens out their flaws while preserving key elements of their individual selves, and learns something key about the other person, whereupon both of them can then meet in the middle, in a conclusion that's essentially egalitarian in spirit. It Happened One Night, however, is not that film....[T]he only character who really has to change her tune is Ellie. There is no meeting in the middle: she's the one who has to "come around" to liking Peter, not vice versa.
Castle is impetuous during investigations, but he keeps being rewarded for this, so it's not as if he has to modify that behavior. Furthermore, we are shown early on, via his relationship with his family, that he is a good man. What, then, is left for him to change? No, the only one who has to change is Kate, and I am not interested in watching her will being worn down to accommodate his.

I've also been watching Boston Legal. I've been wanting to read [info]somniesperus' crossover with DWP, and now I want to cap Candice Bergen when she 's crackverse age and maybe make manips oh help me. ANYWAY, Boston Legal is rather pathetic in comparison to The Unusuals: despite the large cast, so far (through 1x09 "A Greater Good") it only has two real characters, Alan Shore and Denny Crane. The fact that all three female characters either are, have been, or want to sleep with Alan is...execrable. If Candice is not awesome (I haven't gotten to her introduction yet), I will die.

More recommended free MP3s from Amazon:
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ARGH FATHERFUCKER [19 Jun 2009|08:12am]
I had a catastrophic filter collapse in my coffee maker this morning and now, after forcing myself to watch Batman Begins, a movie that I hate, in order to check the plausibility of a vid idea that I have, I have discovered that I can't rip the disc correctly, due to some sort of copy protection (oh, DVD Decrypter, you have let me down).

But! I come bearing...unfinished Grey's Anatomy fic? Yes, it's true. I don't watch Grey's Anatomy anymore; I never came back after winter hiatus, so my last episode was 5x10 "All by Myself." I wrote this after 5x03 "Here Comes the Flood," and, as I said, it is (a) unfinished, (b) didactic, and (c) not remotely in line with later episodes, but I like some of the dialogue. Besides, the world always needs more Meredith & Cristina. ( Read more... )
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O Pioneers [18 Jun 2009|03:42pm]
Check out Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI, Smith '84) discussing the recent crumb from Obama on TRMS. Y'know, After Ellen might be an incestuous vblogging circle jerk, but they are right that visibility matters, because seeing two lesbians talk politics on my TV (my iPod, technically) is darn cool.

P.S. What do I have to do to get an invite to the party (in D.C.!) that Rachel is bar tending on Friday?
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What's so good about the old days? [15 Jun 2009|05:53pm]
(Your soundtrack: "The Old Days" by Dr. Dog, free from Amazon.)

Remember the debate over what steampunk is doing if it's not offering a critique? Well, today Nostalgia: a Sport for the Privileged appeared at Racialicious. As someone who enjoys pulp and films noirs, this is something I've been grappling with quite a bit recently. (I also just read my first Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and there are still skid marks where my brain screeched to a halt after one of the characters said, so casually, n*****.) There's a supplement regarding the interwar period's racism, sexism, and homophobia in the works for Spirit of the Century, the pulp pickup role-playing game I like so much, but it is inescapably a privilege that my thinking beyond "More zeppelins! Gorilla piloting a biplane!" is, well, supplementary. (And on that note, I just bought the bitchingest straw fedora. Center crease with a front pinch, and none of that skinny brim nonsense.)

RM demonstrating business up top, party down below during the 06/09/09 show:
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Actual fashion, as opposed to decor [10 Jun 2009|01:35am]
I don't normally talk about clothes here (or possibly ever), but reasonably priced cargo skirts are rare birds indeed, so I want to share this one in the Sundance Outlet. There are two hip pockets for tucking your hands into, and two snap-closure cargo pockets for your things. I can't wait until I move so that I can go contra dancing more often. (See, these two things are related, because contra dancing is much more fun in a skirt, but you can't have a reticule hanging from your elbow.)

To lend some utility to this post for those of you not on the prowl for a cargo skirt: If you've been stalking me on Last.fm, you know that I've had Midnight Boom, 69 Love Songs, Fantasies, and O My Heart in heavy rotation recently. Songs from each album:
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Fashion (Turn to the left!) [03 Jun 2009|04:33pm]
While anxiously awaiting my delivery of The Sims 3, I obsessed about the rowhouse I'm moving into this summer. I once stayed in this gorgeously decorated B&B (their photos come nowhere close to doing it justice) that struck me as not unlike what Janice Covington and Melinda Pappas' house would look like (it certainly didn't hurt that they had a '30s station playing on satellite radio). Ever since, it's been in the back of my mind to decorate my house like that of a pulp archaeologist. I love the mixture of classic dark woods with mementos from adventures and art deco—perhaps some art nouveau—accents, which is why BioShock is basically like porn for me. (I don't know if BioShock 2 will be a very good game, but I'm confident that it will be a very pretty one, and that's more than enough for me.) And here's a porthole mirror, in case anyone (certainly not me!) wanted to decorate a la Rapture.

I am in love with this adjustable lamp (from JCPenney, of all places), and I do need one for my desk. (I also need a real desk, but that'll be a bit costlier.) I also need wall hangings. I already have Greg Maletic's Tomorrowland poster, and I could pair it with some of Steve Thomas' work (esp. World's Fair Shanghai, Sail Neptune, Venus by Air). Here are more sfnal travel posters for you to admire (hat tip to [info]thelastgoodname, if I remember correctly). Also: Futurism, building a fake future in hopes that the real future will show up to mate with it. And because I have a little Marxist in me, the Fraternal League of Robotic Persons.

I'm thinking about getting a Griffin RocketFM to transmit music from my computer to a Crosley radio downstairs (that's right, my new apartment has two floors!), but I'm not quite sure if that would be a good investment, given that I will have to share with a roomie. I barely spend any time in my living room at present, largely because my computer is not there, but I'd like to change that, so we'll see. Also, is this globe not thoroughly awesome? (Albeit impractical for this stage of my life.)

(And I officially changed my "real life" tag to "meatspace," because the interwebs are definitely part of my real life.)
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FIC: Love Is Like a Bottle of Scotch (Murphy Brown/Linda Ellerbee) [26 May 2009|03:23am]
Title: Love Is Like a Bottle of Scotch
Pairing: Murphy Brown/Linda Ellerbee
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: As may be inferred from the presence of one Murphy Brown, this is a work of fiction and does not purport to be a factual representation of Linda Ellerbee's life. Murphy, meanwhile, was created by Diane English.
Summary: ...but a bottle of Scotch is not like love. Episode tag for 1x20 "The Summer of '77."
Notes: I started this before I finished Holding Pattern; consider it part of my canon for that Murphy. Title/summary ripped off from Stephin Merritt.

( 541 words )
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OW, MY HEAD...BAND [19 May 2009|12:40am]
I rewatched the fight scene in Gossip Girl 2x06 "New Haven Can Wait" more than once tonight. "I'm gonna eff you up!" LEIGHTON <3 (And another <3 for the take where she spanks Blake.) God, why can't the entire show be the Blair (and, by extension, Serena) hour? DIAF, Humphreys.

I've been going through my drafts folder, trying to marshal my WIPs. I thought that some of you would like this Indy/Marion scene. This is the story they're telling at the beginning of The Charm.

( ''Don't move.'' ¶ Indiana's eyes snapped open. Marion was aiming a gun at him, one that looked suspiciously like his gun. )
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Mucho Maddow [14 May 2009|01:20am]
I posted my [info]lgbtfest fic! Read Holding Pattern (Murphy Brown/Rachel Maddow, PG-13). Do the kids still say "mad props"? Because I would like to give [info]bessemerprocess mad props for submitting such an awesome prompt.

This seems like an opportune time to watch Rachel Maddow mix the...Bonus: Dale DeGroff mixes Rachel the Mint Julep, Whiskey Smash (text)

[info]brown_betty was kind enough to give me a Dreamwidth invite. I haven't used it yet, because I'm not sure if I should register thatfangirl, as I did at JF and IJ, or choose a new handle. I've used this one for sevenish years, but...I've been feeling kinda ambivalent about it, lately. Thoughts?
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Pulp RPG photos, Mk. II [09 May 2009|01:55pm]


Flesh-and-blood NAGS, y/y? If you do play Terra Incognita rather than Spirit of the Century, this list does have other photos that reach back into a Victorian sf, rather than pulp, era. ( AIRSHIPS OR GTFO )
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Never change [05 May 2009|11:03pm]
From Media Matters: ( 641Ă—463 image ) And people ask me why I want to teach Intro.1 Which I won't be any closer to doing unless I head back into the Stata mines. *sigh*

1. "By exposing the arbitrary character of the principles by which we unwittingly construct social life, we gain some measure of possibly shaping sociology, the university, society, and ultimately ourselves in ways that permit a greater space for human freedom." — David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 254
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He's (not) covered in marmalade... [01 May 2009|01:29am]
Have you seen the Julie & Julia trailer? It's like a trainwreck, a trainwreck I keep watching in 1080p! Don't get me wrong, I'm going to see it, but the combination of Meryl's face and Julia's coif is breaking my brain. (Not to mention Stanley Tucci as Mr. Child!)

I have a lot of goals for this summer, one of which is to play more video games. (I know, rite?) Now, with The Sims 3 finally dropping June 2, this will not exactly be a challenge. I am also really excited about Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's based on comics, rather than movie, canon. ORACLE IS IN IT! It's scheduled for June 23, but I'm not going to buy it until the price comes down because I haven't played a fighting game since Oni (which I never came close to beating). Plus, there's a whole slew of adventure games I want to check out. And I need to blow the dust off my DS. Speaking of which: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth trailer.

Peaches' Two Guys (For Every Girl) is the m/m slasher theme song, y/y? (Nb. NSFW.)

More recommended free MP3s from Amazon:One week, guys. One week until I get my life back (in order to vid, read, watch, and game get my proposal in defensible condition).
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Was Ist Aufklärung? [13 Apr 2009|11:30pm]
I've been thinking about the Enlightenment lately (dreaming about storming the Bastille, even), specifically how various series are/n't heirs to the Enlightenment project—i.e., that the natural world is knowable and the social order, perfectible. Star Trek, particularly TNG, embraces it uncritically, while Firefly, particularly Serenity, reminds us of the inevitable(?) conclusion. If someone hadn't already used The Flobot's "Handlebars" for an Iron Man vid, I might do something with it:
And I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command
'Cause I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite, by satellite
And I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope, through a telescope
And I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust, in a holocaust...
My black-and-white, 4th generation iPod started to go wonky after four years of faithful service, so after spending a week or two establishing that, yes, the hard drive is failing and, no, I can't do anything about it, I bought one of them new iPod classics. Pythia II is about the same size as Pythia, but her hard drive is 100 GB larger and she plays video. I wasn't quite sure what to do with this (if 4th gen iPods were still available and comparatively cheap, I would've happily bought a new one) until I discovered that The Rachel Maddow Show is syndicated via video podcast. Now I can do more during my commute than torment myself with songs I don't have time to vid! (But I recently upgraded to Premiere CS3 and it, to paraphrase Xander, is a dream. It's a miracle. It's like a dream about a miracle.)

Thursday's show started out boring (pirates = old meme), but got good: there was a flash of the old queer activist when Rachel described HRC as "the gay rights group notable for not having the word gay in their name"; the widely linked teabagging segment; one of her guests called her Dr. Maddow. (It takes so little to brighten my day.) Also, in the April issue of Dossier, Rachel reveals that she got drunk and bought a TV (but fuck whoever did the makeup for that photo shoot. Fuck them right in their eye [and Margarita thinks I swear too much]).

More recommended free MP3s from Amazon:
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HI RACHEL MADDOW COME BE MY FRIEND [20 Mar 2009|05:05pm]
MJ: Since you have expressed your love for both classic cocktails and comic books, I'm wondering if you could name a few, and maybe even a pairing.

RM: There's a really good graphic novel called American Born Chinese, which I could recommend. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, obviously, is really great. I'm a big fan of the series that's called Queen and Country. That's my one true love; if graphic novels were in an orphanage and the orphanage were on fire, I'd rush in and save Queen and Country.

MJ: And you'd read Queen and Country sipping a...?

RM: That's a very good question. There's a great drink called a purgatory, and Queen and Country is all about emotional and bureaucratic purgatory. It's 100-proof rye, Benedictine, and Chartreuse. It's a kick in the teeth. It's perfectly balanced and wonderful, and it's super-alcoholic. I like big drinks that aren't afraid of the alcohol in them. Not big in size, but in flavor, and the way I can allow myself to enjoy them is by making them in very small quantities. I make tiny glasses of very big drinks.

MJ: Any cocktail you think is particularly overrated?

RM: I don't drink vodka. I don't think vodka is useful. I think it's for people who don't like alcohol, in which case, you probably shouldn't be drinking it. I also don't drink any flavored spirits. I realize there is a move among ambitious cocktail people to infuse their own spirits, but I just can't be bothered. I feel like if the ingredient existed in 1895, I'm interested in it. If not, I'm not interested in it.

Rachel Maddow interviewed by Clara Jeffery in Mother Jones
Possibly she also said something about news and politics.

This may be a good opportunity to appeal to you to beta my Rachel Maddow/Murphy Brown story for [info]lgbtfest. Please?

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Talkin' 'bout Watchmen [17 Mar 2009|12:11am]
"There is something about the quality of comics that makes things possible that you couldn't do in any other medium," [Moore] says, with just a hint of the exasperated schoolteacher. "Things that we did in Watchmen on paper could be frankly horrible or sensationalist or unpleasant if you were to interpret them literally through the medium of cinema. When it's just lines on paper, the reader is in control of the experience—it's a tableau vivant. And that gives it the necessary distance. It's not the same when you're being dragged through it at 24 frames per second."


It might have been because the naysayers were right, and Watchmen doesn't work as anything but a comic book, and especially not as a movie, a medium that's in some ways the antithesis of the comic form. As anyone who's been to my blog or been stuck alone with me after I've had too many drinks knows, I'm a big believer in the work of Marshall McLuhan, who labeled movies a "hot" medium (figuratively speaking, they're of a high resolution—the film provides every last detail) and comics a "cool" one (they demand that you fill in sound and movement yourself, in your brain).
And if you talk to me about reading comics, I will invariably bring up what you create between the panels, or what Scott McCloud calls "blood in the gutter," which is all to say that Zack Snyder's Watchmen had, I thought, entirely too much blood and not enough inference.


While scanning some books, I listened to Pendant Productions' fan radio dramas, James Bond: To the End and Indiana Jones and the Well of Life. I didn't grow up listening to radio dramas, so it can't be nostalgic, but the experience definitely tickles something in the hindbrain (paging Dr. Jung?). While some of the acting is awkward (oh, God, the accents), and I could quibble with their characterizations, I'll definitely be checking out their DC series.
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"If I were a man, I'd punch your dirty face in!" [28 Feb 2009|03:15pm]
I was watching D.O.A. today. Because the copyright wasn't renewed in 1977, it's entered the public domain and can be streamed or downloaded at The Internet Archive.

Recommended free MP3s from Amazon:Also terribly useful: The Hype Machine, a music blog aggregator. Keep up with the cool kids, or locate a copy of a certain track. (If you're into that sort of thing.)

I finally started backing up off-site with Mozy. I have four 500 GB HDs set up in a 1 TB RAID, plus I back up to an external HD, but it's all rather useless if my apartment gets hit by a meteor. Sign up using my referral code (RJGTTL) and toss me a few extra MBs, eh?
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Pulp RPG photos [10 Feb 2009|07:45pm]
I was going through Google's LIFE photo archive, collecting images suitable for use in pulp RPGs, and thought I should share. ( Aviatrixes and airships, oh my! )
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Nancy Drew is kinda like Barbara Gordon, anyway [08 Feb 2009|09:27pm]
Via [info]penknife, I discovered [info]freestuff, which does what it says on the tin. There are several recent posts with codes for free Big Fish Games, including several hidden object games. Now, I didn't know they were hidden object games when I downloaded them. I didn't know there were hidden object games when I downloaded them. I had expected mysteries, seeing as how they're from a series entitled Mystery Case Files. Searching a screen filled with random crap in order to find a certain assortment of random crap is not fun for me, nor does it constitue solving a mystery. But I finally figured out why I like Ace Attorney: I like mystery adventure games, doy. For some reason I had circumscribed my gaming into first-person shooters, MMOs, and sims, and had stopped considering other types of titles. So I've spent the day on a tear, looking for mysteries to solve. I procured Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses!, which turned out to be more of a casual game than an adventure game, but, to be honest, I'm kind of rubbishy at puzzles, so a game that is structurally incapable of devolving into "look at everything, take everything, use everything on everything else" is good for my sanity. (Lights, Cameras, Curses! review at Adventure Gamers; at Jay is Games.)
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Year in Review II: Production [25 Jan 2009|01:32am]
I wrote (what is by my standards) a ton of fic in 2008: I broke 10,000 words! (Word says 10,221, to be exact.) Okay, half of that was written in 2007 and then polished and posted in January, but whatever. Here's the breakdown:

Battlestar Galactica
Between the Dark and the Dream, Laura/Lee, R. Began 05/03/07; finished 01/27/08; posted 01/27/08. 4,760 words.

The Facts of Life
Dos and Don'ts, gen, PG. Began circa 12/16/07; finished 01/25/08; posted 01/31/08. 265 words.
B'nai B'rith, Eastland Chapter, gen, PG. Began circa 12/17/07; finished 01/25/08; posted 01/31/08. 339 words.
The Burn Book, Blair/Jo, PG. Began 01/25/08; finished 02/01/08; posted 02/01/08. 1,062 words.

Xena: Warrior Princess
To add a richer strain, Xena/Gabrielle, PG-13. Began 05/31/08; finished 07/15/08; posted 07/15/08. 1,228 words.

Indiana Jones
The Charm, Indy/Marion, NC-17. Began 11/15/08; finished 12/19/08; posted 12/25/08. 2,567 words.

Who knew that my two longest stories would be het? It still blows my mind that I wrote 2,500 words of hetsmut—of Indiana Jones, no less, which I hadn't even seen until this year. ( Self-indulgent navel-gazing about writing that fic, plus perhaps more widely applicable thoughts on Indiana Jones ) I also released two fanmixes, one for Cold Case 2x22 "Best Friends" and one for BioShock. I still identify as a vidder; I guess I should actually vid.
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Year in Review I: Consumption [25 Jan 2009|12:19am]
I usually get these done earlier in the month, but I had to attend to my Yuletide story first. Speaking of which, I'd like to say thank you to BD Black and Andrea, whose comments were not e-mailed to me, leaving me nowhere to respond to. I haven't split this up before, but I tracked TV/movies as well as books/comics, plus I spent the first half of 2008 working less than full-time, thus my consumption habits got a little out of control.

( Books of 2008 )
( Comics of 2008 )
( TV of 2008 )
( Movies of 2008 )

Let's see, I definitely read less comics. I flirted with the tragically not-really-gay Criminal Minds. I fell hard for Marimite, then tried and failed to find another yuri-ish series I liked. I quit SGA. I got suckered back into (and then quit) Grey's. I tried and quit South of Nowhere again. I finished the great DCAU and Xena (re)watches. I started watching Kim Possible (still need to see the last season). I watched Dexter and Slings & Arrows. I finally clicked with 30 Rock. I finally saw the Indiana Jones movies. I also beat Guitar Hero III (on easy), BioShock, and the first two Phoenix Wright games.
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