a++ would smuggle into space again

1. Thank you everyone who, some time ago, left me love on meloukhia's love meme. I will not say more for fear of dissolving into Oscar speeches and clichés. But, I big pink line you guys more than I can possibly say, even for those of you who I remembered to say things about (most of you, I hope.)

2. The Female Character Yenta Meme: OH MY GOD. Delight beyond measure. M-maybe I have recommended Homestuck a creepy amount of times now? It is only because it has the best female cast! And because I am a loser.

3. I cannot stop listening to Lord, I Have Made You A Place In My Heart. I've apparently had it since 2007, but I'd never played it far enough through to realize what the lyrics are actually about. If you're the person who gave it to me, THANK YOU. Since I downloaded it at the same time as a Yoko Kanno song, a Tori Amos song, and a Silver Mount Zion song, I'm guess it's betonprosa.

I've tried to fix up the place, I know it's a disgrace,
you get used to it after a while -
with the flood and the drought and old pals hanging out
with their IOU's and their smiles.
bare naked women keep coming in
and they dance like you wouldn't believe.
Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,
so take a good look - and then leave.

4. The Not My Fandom Fest: write fic based purely on fannish osmosis. Do not miss the Highlander and Supernatural editions.

...namely, MY HEART, the New Pornographers. MY HEART. It usually takes me a lot of coming up on shuffle before I really fall in love with their songs or albums, but I'm pretty sure a lot of this CD will take a briefer time.

Though I've been listening to the many, many musicians linked by unusualmusic and others on this post of women musicians (with a focus on PoC, queer, trans, and people with disabilities, but Metric cropped up in the comments there, and I'm pretty sure Emily Haines is a white cis straight Canadian oh my god maybe she's bi MAYBE I HAVE A CHANCE)

... ahem, anyway. I was going to say, I'm coming to the tragic conclusion that I am just not a rocker. It's the chord progressions. I am not synaesthetic, but that said, I do sort of associate music with tastes, and I like stuff that's sweet -- big open chords, major chord progressions -- or chewy -- like the Heavy's Sixteen -- and all these rock chords feel like a burned tongue to me. I don't know! It is clearly a failing of my own. Meanwhile, I'm starting to understand techno better and better every time I listen to this track.

I do extremely like Shonen Knife now. Which just goes to show that I am twenty-five years behind the times.

~

Between the last time I recced Homestuck and today, the plot developed revolutions. NO I'M SERIOUS. I know how many of you are like "I love revolutions and science fiction and an internet nakama and crack!" Get on this.

( here is some terrible spoilery fanart for this plot development )

~

AND NOW, Almost No One Makes It Out, by atrata. So there's this guy, Tony Stark. And he loses everything when he's a kid, and he's still Tony Stark. And he joins the military. And the rest of his life is a long slow nervous breakdown. It's Iron Man with consequences, and it just, he fucking earns everything he gets, and so does atrata.

yuletide nominations:

Michael Chabon - Gentlemen of the Road
China Mieville - Un Lun Dun
Gunnerkrigg Court
Lackadaisy
The Temptation of Adam (song)
David Benioff - City of Thieves

I'm requesting the first four, which means I need to find other braver souls to request the second two. Which means: promo posts!

( The Temptation of Adam: music link, lyrics, possible directions )

Twittermagnets! This is fun, although my competitive edge wants a bash.org for them. My favorite (not by me) is blinding her cat to heal a boy, mostly because that's a competent plot summary of the Lieutenant of Inishmore. Some other favorites:
* perhaps decay, baby.
* we gaze, / clean but boastful.
* some let the universe down more than / perhaps i would.
* i heart pie?

Mine:
* i miss her secret salt, / steam - daughter / born liquid & grass, / an insolent star.
* think it over - / will we fall? / greedy shiver, / drink down all.

Fair warning: it is probably way too easy to make a poem about the bleeding poison walls of your heart.

---

I'm in the On the Corner café (the corner in question is Divisadero and Fell) which is pretty much my new favorite place to hang out; it's just down the block from a Gamescape and Comix Experience, where I bought The War on Ellsmere last week. I took great pride in going in and saying, "Hi, so, I need some Blue Beetle and maybe some Runaways, and then an independent comic of which you only have one copy! What do you think about Amazons Attack?" while dressed up all skirts and heels for an interview. I should really hang out at s_d again, it makes me feel very full of cred.

I've only been making unlocked posts lately because I'm not sure how to handle DW crossposting on filters; I haven't even friended everyone on DW, let alone thought out my filter policy. There are some things kicking around in my brain, though. In particular lienne has sparked me to do some thinking about an area of my life that usually goes unexplored with his recent string of posts. Hmmm~

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I think I actually like If You Seek Amy, based on the music video and all the cardancing I do to it. Don't tell me I'm dead to you because I'm dead to me, believe me. On a less depressing note, this is pretty awesome.

So, like, I appreciate that working out gender roles is super hard and everything, it's very complicated, and during my first bisexual freakout I said a lot of things about how looking at girls was just because they were pretty and women are so warm and close and fuzzy and hot. Wait, no, no, not that last one. And I do understand that when you are first waking up to the idea that girls don't always act like Girls and boys don't always act like Boys it seems very confusing and you say dumb things while you're working them out.

( But for the love of God, Katy Perry, do you have to do it all over the airwaves? )

... What, I need a reason for the Music Man? Well, let's say it's because I found out that there's a Matthew Broderick and Kristin Chenoweth version of it, and I am both horrified and charmed.

1. A short drama:

EMMA: Okay, I know my phone is somewhere in my room...
HURRICANE WRECKAGE OF HER FLOOR: *stares back*
EMMA: ... under the bed? Oh god, what is that? It looks like -- it's -- it's collapsed inwards like a brain or something.
HIPPOCAMPUS: Remember that time you dropped the peach and it rolled somewhere?
EMMA: Oh no no no.
HIPPOCAMPUS: And how there have been a couple of flies in your room?
EMMA: Oh no no no no no. *pries under the bed with a broom*
OBJECT: *squishes, moves forth into the light*
HIPPOCAMPUS: ... Oh, oops. My bad!

On the bright side, I have a brain plushie now.

2. stilljewish: already chock-full of thirty different sides. I love it.

3. [The Tao te Ching] abiding appeal — particularly in overseas markets like our own — has always been in its seeming timelessness, its lack of discernible "cultural baggage," particularly in a translation that has already by re-sanitized to enhance its marketability in the target audience. Fascinating article about the origins of the Tao te Ching in its current incarnation, how it's so far from being the whole story of Taoism, and how historical court politics rewrote the modern perception of the religion. Sadly, I used to own the Tao of Pooh. Here, from debunkingwhite.

4. My newly acquired copy of the High School Musical soundtrack has karaoke tracks. AndI'mcompletelythrilled. JUST KILL ME NOW.

5. Time spent trying not to make the first point a parody of the Gun Song from Assassins: ten worrying minutes. (I've got this really great phone! Shit, where is it? Anyway it's really great -- shit, where is it? -- well actually it's just a featherweight-- but -- it's a phone.)

skdghjk. So somebody made a vid to "I Enjoy Being A Girl"? And it's incredibly hot? And it features a lot of Zoe and Starbuck? And I'm not saying I sing this song every time I get dolled up for a party because sometimes I sing 'I Feel Pretty' instead but if I were to theoretically say that, I would also have to point out that this is essentially the choreography I would do to accompany it.

Which is a good segue into something I've been wondering, viz: there's a lot of music that I like only because of other influences, like -- oh this is so terrible, I have to hand in my indie card -- Radiohead. Which I like almost 100% only because of Rodeohead and the closing credits to Ergo Proxy. I am never going to like Radiohead for their musical merits (I KNOW I KNOW) and Creep may be in my top ten list of hated songs (right up there with that horrible Superman song. "I'm more than a bird! I'm more than a plane! I'm more than some pretty face beside a train." I only worked out it was ironic a few years ago and by then it was too late to unhate it.) But Rodeohead takes those same drawn-out somewhat whiny songs and makes them action-packed and fantastic, and the vid sets them to all of Firefly ever, and so I can appreciate what is awesome about the song without worrying about what is crap.

Do other people do this? With what? (It is okay if you say "I hate Colin Meloy and Emily Haines except for their use in this one vid." Really!)

I have an new, embarrassing favorite song.

In other news, I can't stop reading Family Man, so I thought I'd make a proper pimp post. Family Man is by quirkybird, who is otherwise famous for Bite Me!, a webcomic about French revolutionary vampires. Bite Me! was done when she was in, er, college I think? and reads like it's on speed; certainly the art, while totally eye-catching, is unprofessional. On the other hand: it's a comic about French revolutionary vampires, okay, it had me at 'hello.'

Family Man is not about French revolutionary vampires. It is about German academic werewolves. I love it even more.

It is also very much not on speed. It is professionally, quietly done, well-inked, well-colored, beautifully lined, and gorgeously researched. The pace is gradual; so far it's been in progress for a couple of years and Luther, the main character, has only just met his love interest. (Unless you're me, and you think that Lucien's his love interest. What, I can't help it.) Said Luther, the main character, is fucking amazing. His father was a Jew who converted to Christianity for love of his mother, and Luther's tangles with Christianity, his heritage, and his reason are phenomenal. (The most recent page is my favorite so far; if you read it, you'll know why.) If you like academia, I can pretty much promise that you'll enjoy this. If you like stories of struggles with faith, I sincerely hope you love it as much as I do.

(The one flaw in the art is that, since she naturally draws big-nosed characters, she's chosen to give her Jewish characters a sort of commedia dell'arte nose. Don't think too much about it.)

Music video under the cut. For a band called "The Schema", which doesn't actually exist -- the best I gathered is that it's one man's experiment to put out a record on the extreme cheap. Which means you lot ought to purchase the song, as I will do. Eventually. When I've stopped streaming it four thousand times.

But you know what? It doesn't matter that the song sounds like fun knockoff Steely Dan. All that really matters is that apparently the writer (rhodri) has had this said about him:

"Rhodri must have an almost scarily flamboyant inner Frenchman, bound and gagged in the basement of his being, quoting muffled scraps of Debord as Rhodri's inner guards kick the shit out of him."

( those rules you made )