damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
Okay, so matching my NaNo word-for-word with ItO is not going to happen. Long shot anyway. But switching off between the two seems to be doing wonders, as long as I make sure I stay on my NaNo for enough total writing time to get to the word goal for the day. \o/

The NaNo's awful, obviously, because I've barely planned it and I'm still shuffling names and character attributes, and I'm sure it's going to get horrid and preachy and anvilicious because I have ~thoughts~ about the genre. But! So far, I'm enjoying the writing, and it's pacifying my mother, who, despite losing a couple small arguments with me about the merits of fanfic, still nags me about getting something original written. (Besides the dwarf pirate captain story, which ... still isn't done. I should really go back and clean that up some.)

More importantly, though, Hawaii 5-0. ) Basically, ♥ EVERYTHING.

I also finally got a movie I had not watched before from Netflix, which was Newsies - yes, that musical where tiny!Batman sings about Santa Fe. I had never seen it before yesterday, despite having run across The Refuge and devoured everything in it several years ago. And ... wow. Terrible timing, because the absolute last thing I need right now is a new fandom, but that movie is ridiculous, in the best possible way. Oh, god, the dancing.

Cut not for spoilers, since this movie's only four years younger than I am, but because nobody else cares about this. ) I actually had a Newsies dream last night, which is the shortest transition ever from the initial media to my subconscious. (Although, granted, the fact that I read the fics probably gave it a bit of a head start.) And Christian Bale's New York accent is just precious.

But! Now I should get back to work. :D
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
I just woke up from a very interesting dream, of which I actually remember some contiguous parts. ) It was kind of cool in a creepy way - it would have bugged me more if all this had not happened with me under the distinct impression that, should the dream continue, I would be fixing this situation. Also, for at least part of it, dream!me was a dude, which has actually happened several times.

I had a little trouble going to sleep last night because of an extremely long bout of asymmetrical tinnitus. It's the first time that I can remember my ears ever ringing for that long, and I'll admit it makes me a little nervous, after all that stuff in Intro Audiology about how asymmetry usually means a referral, because it could be a sign of something wrong neurologically. However, it's only happened the once, so. If it starts happening on a regular basis, then I might see about getting it checked out.

Which reminds me: yes, Hearing Rehab is still on notice. Hard. I actually wrote "fuck you" in my notebook two or three times while taking notes, because it was seriously driving me out of my tree. ) If I expect anyone in the world to remember to make that distinction clear and obvious, it's somebody in CMSI who ought to know this shit. And she just ... never did; not once, through the whole class. >.<

Anyway. I also wrote over a thousand more words of maybe![community profile] ladiesbigbang A:TLA fic during class, which I know is awful and wrong and awful and I did it anyway. /o\ I have essentially finished the first chunk, and it is clocking in at over six thousand words. There are supposed to be around twenty such chunks total, which means that if this keeps up, I am staring 120k words of fic in the face. D: And it's not even the first time; I keep cleverly chaining myself to these massive canon-rewrite "what if" AUs, it's like my catnip. The first fic of the HP AU series is nearly 90k words, and those are probably only going to get longer as they go on (this is assuming I ever even make it through them before I die, natch).

why, brain?!? whyyyyyyyy.

Still, I can't complain too much. At least I have a plan, which is a relief; it's not like I'm diving into 120k words not knowing where it's going. That would be scarier.
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
I am tired of being terrible at titling my posts, and so have decided to go the pretentious route: moderately appropriate song lyrics with no capital letters. \o/ I see no way in which this can fail me.

The reason this line applies is because on Friday, I had my first meeting of Music in Live Performance, a one-credit class I'm taking because AT asked me to and I am a doormat. :D It's not really much of a class: we go to the space where one of the five concerts we'll be attending is being held, and talk to the performer(s) for half an hour, and then stay for the concert. And at the end, we have to turn in some kind of journal thing, so that they can actually have something to grade.

Anyway, Friday's concert was performed by this man, who is pretty fabulous. The people in the course came early, and we ended up climbing up onto the stage and singing a piece of shape-note music with him, which was lovely. I cannot read music, but fortunately we went through it a few times, and that's generally all I need to be able to sing something reasonably well. (If we operationalize "well" as a measure of right notes hit, not quality of voice, that is.) He tended to favor a style of music that I rather like, although my favorites were the more up-tempo ones.

The reasoning behind the title is that one of the songs he sang during the concert was a version of the same story that is told in the song "The Cruel Sister", of which the title is the first line. His version was a bit abbreviated, in addition to differing in the details: the minstrel made a fiddle out of the dead sister's bones and hair, not a harp, and when he played it, it would only make the sound of wind and rain; the song ended without the minstrel going back to the family's house and playing the instrument at the cruel sister's wedding, and so the crime was never revealed. He also sang a version of another song that I know best because the Old Blind Dogs sang it, this one being "Edward", except in this one, the brother was killed, not the father, and, again, it ended early - the narrator settled for exiling himself, and didn't go into how he was going to let his castle fall into disrepair, leave his family to beg for a living, and curse his mother to Hell.

... Oh, traditional music. How so bloodthirsty?

I also got reintroduced to my own subconscious Eurocentrism; I experienced a brief and damning moment of surprise when AT revealed that she was not acquainted with Ichabod Crane or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, despite being well aware that AT's cultural background is Viet, and she would have no reason to know either. Which reminds me of yet another time B has nearly made me blow my stack. ) Argh.

Still, it was not nearly as bad as the flag conversation. )

... it's only until May, it's only until May, it's only until May ...

In less infuriating news, I had two Harry Potter dreams that I only vaguely remember, and a third about spiders that was truly awful (one of them was huge and black and shiny and under my bed, and the other was smaller and kind of like a daddy longlegs but then it grew and grew and its body was all fat and squishy when I kicked it out the door except then I was trapped inside with the big black one-), all on the same night. I must have been sleeping pretty badly, to wake up three times, but fortunately I could nap the day after.

Also, despite having to study for a Hearing exam that was moved up, and slogging dutifully away through my thesis, I've still managed to get to the fourth chapter of the second book of the HP AU. Which may be due to the fact that I spent all of my classes on Tuesday writing in my fic notebook, and managed to get down a very pleasing ~2,000 words. I am such a terrible student. /o\ I also watched the first Narnia movie today, because it came through my Netflix, and, man, if you're looking for it at all, the Peter/Edmund just leaps off the screen and slaps you in the face. (Then again, I may be biased; most of what I remember about the second one consists of Peter and Caspian smoldering at each other and Susan's battle eyeliner.)

That was ... maybe a smaller wall o' text than usual? I'm trying to cut down a little. :D
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
The night before last, I had a dream about which I remember nothing except that it included a whole lot of Sarah Shahi and her perfect face (undoubtedly a consequence of too much Life); last night, I dreamed that I was trying to show somebody that Holmes Tik-Tok vid, except I couldn't find it without playing all this other stuff I had first. I was just about to get to it ... and then I woke up. It was weirdly frustrating. Oh, subconscious. Sometimes you vex me.

Also, randomly: in a certain sense, I think it's a good thing Burn Notice didn't start until after I got back to school - and thus lost my control of the TV. If I had been able to watch a few eps and then had the TV bent to B's whims, I might have cried a little. (At least the internet here is good; maybe I can catch up online, if USA leaves the eps up long enough.)

There was mass yesterday, which was interesting; the sermon was structured around a box metaphor where the box stood for two totally different things at different times, and the transition between the two was not especially graceful, so that was a little confusing. It was also interesting because it held certain tinges of "omg oppression!" that got my back up a little. Christianity is not exactly an oppressed or marginalized faith, although I grant that Catholicism possibly gets a little more shit in the US than it does elsewhere. I remember being incredibly pleased when Obama mentioned non-believers in his inauguration speech, because it was the first time I could remember hearing anyone include atheism in a list of religious alignments that needed to learn to work together. I don't think Christianity is under attack in the ways the sermon sometimes implied.

Still, the music was lovely; and again, I found myself enjoying the readings from the Bible more than I expected to. I just have such a thing for antiquated text, archaic word choice and phrasing - it gets me every time.

ETA, for future reference: vid post with download link.
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
Hey, look, it's another really long annoying post. \o/

First, two weird/mildly interesting dreams. ) I know I'm probably getting excessive about recording these things, but some of them are really interesting, and I'm hoping I'll get better at remembering them as time goes on.

In Human Cultures last week, we watched a video about the gold rush and consequent white settlement of Papua New Guinea, about which I have a few thinky thoughts. ) Mostly, I ended up wondering what would have happened if the Papua New Guineans had had the chance to control their own natural resources, instead of having them essentially stolen.

I also have new gripes about B to record. For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, she came to Chicago on the trail of her father's killers rented both Princess Mononoke and Life Is Beautiful. Life Is Beautiful, she rented without knowing it was a movie about the Holocaust; along the way, there is a point at which it becomes obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that the main character's family is Jewish. B responded to this revelation with the following utterly boggling statement: "But [the main character] doesn't look Jewish."

Fortunately for my own self-respect, my mouth did not manage to get in the way of my brain this time; I said something rather acidic about how, yes, right, of course, because you could definitely tell whether people were Jewish just by looking at them. Fortunately for our continuing friendly relations, she immediately turned sheepish, and apologized.

(... For the record, B does not spend every second of every day saying offensive things; just the other day, she paid for a complete stranger's lunch because he forgot his student ID card. I have to start noting the times she makes me glad I know her, too, just so that I don't end up with a ton of bitter entries and nothing nice to balance it out. :D)

And, finally, I spent this last weekend at home. We don't get today off, but Friday was our fall recess, and today I only have - well, would have had - one class, so I skipped and spent an extra day at home. The guineas are truly enormous now; they haven't lost all of their baby feathers yet, so if you had to, you could probably tell Clary, DG, and Evey apart, but it's tough. They have also developed the adorable habit of following anyone that comes within a fifteen-foot radius, including people, the dogs, and the car. They don't like to be without the sound of human voices, so we've put a clock-radio out in the barn, and we turn it on for them to listen to.

My sister got my mother a board game - The Settlers of Catan - for her birthday; we played it about four times this weekend, and came up with at least a page of alternate rules. The most significant alteration was probably our set of changes to the Robber. ) Probably worrying about the meta implications of a board game makes us both complete freaks, but. I like the Reaper a lot better than the Robber. I'd worry about having erased the natives of Catan, except I don't think the game's creators intended for anybody to think of the Robber as such, or, indeed, for anybody to worry about whether Catan had a native population in the first place. Which is kind of fail in its own way, I guess.

I am managing to mostly keep up with SPN through reaction posts; I really, really don't want to spend time and energy watching the show until I know how S5 is going to end. Which I know is wimpy, and possibly even kind of wanky/entitled, but I need to be happy, okay. Unless the ending is in the general vicinity of what I want to have happen, I don't want to get myself super invested, because then I will cry like a baby. A hungry, angry baby. And be sad.

The same kind of goes for Merlin, except without the worry - that's just because I don't have access to the show at the moment.

I spent pretty much the entire trip back on the bus making hypothetical mental vids to the songs that came up on my playlist. Peculiarly enough, the fandom that comes most readily to my mind when I hear Stroke 9's Do It Again is due South, solely because of the "you're a freak" part; every time I hear that, there's, like, a ghost "... understood" that follows it in my brain, and I spend the rest of the song picturing RayK and Fraser.

... Someday, I should actually watch that show.

Also, I did not throw up on the bus, or pass out. \o/

**thunk**.

Aug. 24th, 2009 12:47 pm
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
We have taken to calling the guineas "peeps", because "guineas" is too long for us lazy people, and I keep forgetting that the proper word for baby guineas is "keet", instead of "chick".

So.

The peeps are deeply attached to me - or, well, to people in general. )

I've been so occupied with them that I haven't written much of anything lately, but presumably that will change once I'm back at school - I tend to end up with weirdly huge amounts of free time when I'm there, which is perhaps because I have almost no social life at all. \o/ I certainly hope it does, since there's oodles of cliché-bingo-based stuff yet to do, and also I am still slogging away at the great HP AU.

I had another very strange dream; not much of this one stuck, except for the very strong impression that 1) I spent at least part of it in some back section of Dan & Whit's that was ... a restaurant, instead of the stock-feed-and-gardening supply part that's actually in the back of D&W's, and 2) at some later point I was at home, and I passed Adam Lambert on the stairs as I went to fish the peeps out of the sink, where they had somehow ended up. Clearly I have been reading too much AI8 lately.
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
I've been sort of overdosing Harry Potter lately - first going to HBP, and then my mother got OotP on her Netflix because she couldn't remember anything about it, and we watched that, and then also I just got up the nerve to share the few chapters of the HP AU that I've actually written with M (she liked it! Although she's definitely the sort to say that, even if they were deeply terrible - though she would probably add a little concrit to the compliments, if she really didn't like it). So it's possible that I shouldn't be surprised that I had an HP-verse dream the other day. ) I very distinctly remember thinking at this juncture that I was a dreadful Mary Sue, because here I was, an original character (and a self-insert at that!), and I was beating Voldemort about the head with a jacket, and I wasn't dead. (And, of course, in a larger sense, I was fighting Voldemort, which was something Harry, or maybe some of the professors, ought to be doing.)

It was very odd, but rather a fun dream. I must add it to the list. That makes three flying dreams (one with wings, two where it was my superpower), a pirate dream (I was Elizabeth the Red, scourge of the high seas - mostly I remember the part where that was my name, and the part where I boarded a ship by swinging on a bit of rigging), and three fandom dreams (one SG-1, one J2, and this one).

I also must add to my wildlife count for the summer, with two more moles in Mary's garden, a wild turkey crossing the road on the way home, and a deer in the field across from my house, nomming very happily on some grass, and regarding my car with a very blasé kind of air as I passed it.

My thesis research is slowly but surely progressing; I have now completed three interviews, although one is probably not long enough to provide a good speech sample, and have two more scheduled for next week.

My mother is currently updating me daily on the tale of my birth, as my birthday approaches. My due date was three days ago, but my birthday's not until the third of August; I was very late indeed. (If I had been five minutes earlier, my birthday would be the second of August, but no; I felt it was best to wait until 12:04 AM of August third.) She loves to tell us these things, she does the same thing to my sister when March rolls around. I have done a little hinting around as to things I would like, and it looks like the first season of Burn Notice on DVD has a very good chance of happening. \o/!

Syntax is slowly leaching away my will to live. I appreciate the quirky beauty, the intricacy and arbitrariness, the flexibility, of English grammar, really. But I've taken, like, five classes on it. I was kind of hoping that this course would be a little more comparative - a little more about other languages, languages that are very different from English, languages with tenses and moods and particles and other things that don't exist in English. ... Sigh.

Thank god for conlanging, I guess. :D
damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
Okay, I just had a very peculiar dream.

The main "plot" was both mildly distressing and rather banal, at least for a dream. For some reason, all of my friends were in New Zealand, or going to New Zealand together, or something like that; I decided I would follow them there as soon as I could, as something I can't remember was holding me back from going with them right away. And I did, checking my bags - and ... a kitten? A black-and-white one, I think, even though I have no such cat - and catching the plane.

Except it took me to Antarctica, instead of New Zealand - I caught the wrong one, I think, rather than catching the right one but having it go to the wrong place, because when I got there I did not have my bags. Or my kitten, about whom I was very worried. I left the plane (there wasn't really much of an airport to speak of) and ... went to school, as one does when one has somehow been accidentally routed to Antarctica.

Here's the peculiar part: somewhere between the plane and the school setting, this turned into J2 fic. I kid you not. Suddenly it wasn't me anymore, it was (god, this is SO WEIRD) Jensen, whose parents had just been assigned to the research labs on Antarctica, and he was all nervous about having to penetrate the weird insular social group that all the scientists' kids had formed, and one kid was totally being or going to be a jerk to him, except then Jared, who had been living there for ages, decided to help him out, and sat with him in class! IDEK. *hands*

And then, suddenly, as soon as the sitting down happened, it was me again - no Jensen, no Jared, just me with my notebook, waiting for class to start and writing, "Shit. Shit, I was supposed to go to New Zealand," in my notebook. In the gibberish alphabet that I usually use to write notes to myself, no less - cut for explanation. )

??!?!?!!??!?! I'm not exactly a tinhat, but I do read a lot of J2 fic, I admit it. However, I spent most of yesterday mainlining some classic K/S; at no point did I read any J2. I had a Jack/Daniel Stargate dream, once, but that was after an SG-1 marathon, and also the dream was continuous; I've never had my brain suddenly flick to the slash channel mid-dream, and then flick back! It was SO BIZARRE.

Clearly today is going to be weird.

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damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
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