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 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.)

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. )

"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."

— Alan Moore: An Extraordinary Gentleman, The Guardian

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).

— Inna Final Analysis: Why Watchmen Doesn't Quite Work (and Why It Does), io9

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.

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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.

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.

The yuletide authors have been revealed. Thanks again to triciabyrne1978 and wisdomeagle for writing for me! I wrote The Charm (Indiana Jones, Indy/Marion, NC-17) for dotfic. I'm not surprised that nobody guessed my authorship—it's not as if I've written hetsmut before—but I did manage to use almost 15 semicolons in a story of only 2500 words.