Date: 2009-05-26 12:21 Subject: Tiny fannish meet-up! New York edition Security: Public

Hello, all! For my short stay here in New York, otherdeb has suggested we meet tomorrow (Wednesday) at 3:45 for coffee/tea/pastry/fannish meet-up at Esperanto Cafe, at 114 MacDougal St, between Bleecker and W 3rd St. It's a short walk from the W 4th St and Houston St subway stations.

Deb tells me the place still has that good old Village feel, and the internet tells me it has free wifi, if you like to make sure your fannish gatherings include full use of a laptop.

If anyone would like to join us, please come along! If you drop a comment or send me an email today, I'll make sure to email you my cell phone number before tomorrow afternoon.

Date: 2009-05-24 13:50 Subject: Hello again! Security: Public

Wheeee! The air conditioning has been turned on in my apartment building. It feels gooood.

And, yes, I'm back in my apartment. I returned from working in Italy this week. I'm taking the next week off of work, and I'll be going up to NYC tomorrow, and on to Jersey for my college reunion later in the week.

I'll be staying with a friend in New York. I don't quite know how our plans will shake out, but if folks who'll be in New York--or, for that matter, will be at the Princeton Reunions--want to try meeting up for a coffee or a drink or such, do drop me a line.

And, as has become terribly usual for me, I've not been keeping up with online goings-on. If there are folks who've moved to Dreamwidth from LJ who think I should know they're on Dreamwidth, please feel free to inform me of that, too. My current, tiny DW access/subscription list thingy has been formed all willy-nilly, not because I'm trying to leave folks off but because I am lazy.

And thanks for yet more comments on my silly found poetry! It now seems inescapable that I'm never going to reply to them properly D: But I've been very happy to read them nonetheless.

Date: 2009-03-05 18:12 Subject: Buonasera! Security: Public

Всем привет! I'm in Italy for work, and will be here till the middle of May. I really want to work on learning how to say more than a few words in Italian, but, well, a) I am terrible at independent study and am living among Americans (without even having Italian TV to watch!) and b) till next week, at least, I want to work on reviewing Russian. I've signed up to take a Russian proficiency test (on Friday the 13th), and if I do well, it could eventually lead to bonus money with each paycheck.

So I want to do well! And thus I am practicing listening to Russian news articles and literary excerpts read aloud. Hmph. I hate having to do comprehension questions based on something that was read out loud to me once. I'm bad at that in my native language! But those kinds of questions are on the test, so I am trying to re-hone my Russian-listening ear. I remember taking this kind of test before, for Urdu, and it was a little rough. But I actually know Russian pretty well, in contrast to Urdu, so it should be easier this time. (I loved my Urdu classes, but after taking it for two summers, I still only had a pretty small vocabulary pool, and then by the time I took the test, after a year of not using Urdu, I knew even fewer words. I've had a lot more experience with Russian, though.)

Really, though, I don't know how much studying I'm actually going to be doing this week, either. There's Italy to go out and about to! I'm in tonight, because it's pretty stormy out, but it's supposed to be nice this weekend.

That's about all my news for now! It remains to see how much weight I'm going to gain here--the food is goooood.

Date: 2009-02-01 19:35 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public Tags: fic, sga

Whoa-ho! I have not been keeping up with LJ at all! Someone gave me a darling polar-bear virtual gift a couple of weeks ago. Thank you, anonymous giver of virtual bear!

I also have not been catching up on all the nice comments to the found-poetry posts. I still mean to do that, dammit. Thank you, commenters!

Hm. I am enjoying work, but I keep staying late at the office, and when I get home, I'm just either working on foreign-language classwork (sporadically) or chatting with Hth about Ronon (constantly. He and his friends have many adventures). Or I'm actually enjoying an in-person social life! Craziness, right? (That's why I opted to get a studio right in the middle of DC, of course--it means it's easy even for me to stumble out of my cave and find things to do, when prompted to do so. Also, it meant that when Hth and Mary came to visit the other week, we got to walk right down to the Mall for Inauguration. Not bad, eh?)

But, yes, I'm not keeping up with LJ or with the many SGA projects I have on the back-burner. I still like to think I'll get to them. I have vids I want to try making, starting with the Teyla one, and there's still the Planet Brothel story and, of course, many Ronon stories, not to mention old episode commentaries, icons, and speculation about the future of the characters. ( Here, this is what Season 6 should have been )

So, hm. Now that I am looking at LJ, I see there's a meme that's been going 'round:

Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.

...Would this even work for me? To the total detriment of a story, I tend to throw everything I'm thinking about onto the page. I often skip that "editing" step that makes stories good. Oh, well--feel free to ask! I keep meaning to round up a good list of links for my stuff, but, till then, older stories are here and newer ones are here. There might be some stuff on neither of those lists under the fic tag, too.

ETA: And speaking of catching up on the past few weeks of LJ: I was just poking around more journals and--Oh, white folks. Really? We can't give people a rest from this? Sometimes I think my tendency to interact so little online could be put down more to well-reasoned cleverness than introverted laziness. I'm not going to comment more on it here, particularly since I'm only now reading up on it, but--really, people.

Date: 2009-01-12 22:54 Subject: important discovery Security: Public Tags: sga

Oh, hey, I figured out why John Sheppard drags that Johnny Cash poster around with him everywhere.

It's because this would be too heavy to carry through the Stargate!

(Plus, I'm sure he doesn't want it competing with his candles.)

Date: 2009-01-10 15:31 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

What?! A Dog's Breakfast is on the hulu.com. I never did see it. I guess I'll watch it now, what with it being free and all.

And if you already have seen it, you can watch the Marx Brothers or the slashiness that is A League of Their Own on hulu, too.

Oh, and one of these days, I will respond to all of the very kind comments on my previous posts. Really! I appreciate them! I might even get around to commenting on SGA episodes, too. All the time in the world now, really, right?

Date: 2008-12-28 20:53 Subject: Found Poetry: It Doesn't Stop Security: Public Tags: fic, sga

Oh, wow! I'm so pleased folks are having fun with my found-poetry nonsense. I look forward to answering everyone's comments.

Now, here's the thing about that poem. The reason I didn't post it right away, back when I gathered all the material for it from sgastoryfinders, is in large part because all the fun McShepness, which popped right out of the posts and practically wove itself together, didn't really reflect my own fannishness. Certainly, the fun McShepness is fun! I've enjoyed many a John/Rodney work. But John/Rodney isn't really what the fandom's about for me--and so I was resistant to making the found poem about it, even though that's where the found material was pushing me.

But I'm glad I obeyed the material's dictates! It seems to resonate for a lot of people [g] Still, though, because "Found" only reflects part of my fannish experience, tonight I went back to the materials I'd gathered, to produce this new poem, below! Big thanks to Hth for improving it as much as I would let her, and to thingswithwings for encouragement.

* * * *
Searching
by sgastoryfinders posters, arranged by linabean

( Maybe it was Ronon insted of / of Ford. )

Date: 2008-12-28 01:59 Subject: Poetry! (All around us!) Security: Public Tags: fic, sga

So, when I was just poking around livejournals, I saw a mention of that wonderful resource sgastoryfinders--and it reminded me that I haven't looked at it in months and months! And that, in turn, reminded me that months and months ago, I'd read a post on there where I just really liked the rhythm of someone's request:

I'm trying to find a fic
and it's annoying me to no end
that I cannot find it.
I thought it was on Wraithbait
but I couldn't find it.

And thus was born the mad idea to randomly select sgastoryfinders posts, cull lines from them, and see what kind of poem I can find thereby.

And, well, then I never ended up posting such a poem because, here's the thing: when you start randomly selecting posts on that community, nearly every one is more wonderful and fantastical than the last. I ended up with dozens upon dozens of pages I wanted to see cobbled together, such that the final poem would probably just end up being an instruction: "GO READ EVERYTHING AT THAT COMMUNITY / AS I HAVE JUST DONE."

But, now that another year is almost over, I figured I'd go ahead and post as much as I'd put together at the time. Because it amuses me, and this is my journal.

[ETA:] The companion piece, "Searching," is here. [/ETA]

* * * *
Found
by sgastoryfinders posters, arranged by linabean

( John suffers / from an inner ear infection. )

Date: 2008-11-15 10:22 Subject: Gen Harry Potter recs? Security: Public Tags: harry potter

Hello, friendly folks in LJ-land! I'm sorry I've been AWOL. Lately I seem to spend all my Internet time catching up on my TV shows and chatting with Hth about John/Ronon. Sometimes Ronon/Carson/Rodney.

But I just heard from my aunt that my little cousin "has discovered the internet and Harry Potter fan fiction in an ugly way." She adds, "God, that stuff TANKS!" Now, it's not at all surprising that the cousin would be finding terrible fanfic--there's lots of it, after all. But I know there's also lots of good stuff! I thought it'd be cool if I could point her to some better stories.

Unfortunately, I haven't been reading HP fanfic in a long time, and what I did read tended to include explicit sex. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with a 13-year-old reading "adult" stories if that's what she wants to do (I certainly did at that age, even if it was in pulpy novels instead of online), but I don't want to be the one pushing them on her.

So, does anyone have recommendations for good Harry Potter gen? I can always start looking for things myself, but I'd love to hear what you all think.

Thanks!

Date: 2008-07-17 17:15 Subject: curious Security: Public Tags: sga

What I'm wondering is why John Sheppard and Ronon Dex were even on the NYC subway.

(And hi! I do mean to really update one of these days. Anyhow, I'm doin' well, keepin' busy. Hi :)

Date: 2008-05-05 20:54 Subject: SGA 4x20 "The Last Man" 2/2 Security: Public Tags: sga

My take on SGA 4x20 "The Last Man" continues! Part 1 is here.

( Part 2 is here )

Date: 2008-05-05 20:35 Subject: SGA 4x20 "The Last Man" 1/2 Security: Public Tags: sga

Hiya! I've been meaning for months now to put up reactions to late-season-four episodes of SGA, so, of course, they're now terribly late. But it's not like we have new episodes yet to entertain us, right?

So, then, here is a transcript for ( SGA 4x20 The Last Man, rewritten to reflect my impressions of it. )

Part 2

Date: 2008-04-14 13:12 Subject: hey, DC-area folks Security: Public

I think tomorrow I'm going to go to the Warner Theatre to buy a ticket for the May 3 Kids in the Hall performance. Anyone else gonna go?

Tickets aren't cheap, at $40-45, plus extra fees...but, hey! Kids in the Hall!

Date: 2008-04-05 22:22 Subject: hey, still around Security: Public

Hey hey! I kept meaning to put up SGA posts here. I have all kinds of things to say on "Last Man" and "Kindred"--hell, I still have a mostly-finished post on "Midway" rattling around the computer. I've also got a bunch of somewhat-finished stories sitting around, ones that were just about as finished last summer or earlier. I should work on some of those, I guess.

But, see! It's just so much easier to try to catch hth_the_first on IM and chat out Ronon/John ideas or even, God help me, Ronon/Carson ideas. Did you know that if the SGA kids figured out how to safely defreeze Carson, and then Ronon kept hanging around him because he wants them to help each other through their respective traumas, plus he has a little crush, Carson would turn out to be surprisingly toppy? Yeah, I hadn't known that, either. The Ronon/John is a little less unsettling. There's a lot of bickering, though.

Besides that stuff, I will also say that I've been honestly busy. For example, I had to be the maid of honor at my sister's heteronormativity extravaganza wedding last weekend. And then this weekend I've just moved from staying at my parents' in Florida to my own place in DC.

This is kind of a strange, sad weekend to move to DC, but, well, this is when the apartment became available. My friend just moved out, and I knew from coming to visit him that this place was both great and affordable, so I decided I should take it.

So I signed the lease yesterday and am now sitting here in my new studio, somewhat unpacked. The place wouldn't even be that new to me, given the previous visits here, except I've rearranged the furniture to a much different effect. Oh, yeah, my friend also left behind a bunch of furniture--just left it here for me. It's worked out pretty nicely. Also, the cherry blossoms are pretty.

Hope y'all are doing well! As always, feel free to drop me a line :)

Date: 2008-02-26 01:19 Subject: SGA Chat Round-Up, Part 8/8 Security: Public Tags: goofy chats, sga

And yet more saved-up old chat transcripts! Here are links to Chat Batches One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven.

( Befuddlement at the Museum )

( Ronon and Keller: Pals )

( Rodney's contemplation of Ronon's hot body and getting the babes )

( Dumb villains and the poor Replicators )

( More Outcast: Foisting it on family members )

( Pre-Midway chat; also, Rodney/Teal'c )

( The Ancients' toilets )

( Post-mortem Katie/Rodney )

Hey hey! That's the last of my rounded-up random chats. Now I just have to post my nonsense on "Midway," and I'll be caught up.

Date: 2008-02-25 20:45 Subject: SGA Chat Round-Up, Part 7/? Security: Public Tags: goofy chats, sga

Here are links to Chat Batches One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six.

( Some reactions to Trio )

( Joseph Mallozzi: Smug incompetent schmuck or smuggest incompetent schmuck?; Also, Katie/Rodney )

( Ronon-Keller from Trio and Ronon's Five-Year Plan To Get John in Bed )

( Ronon/Rodney: Terribly cute )

( Ronon/Rodney: Cranky and cute )

( Ronon's Five-Year Plan To Get John in Bed, for real this time )

More, with antics at the art museum, to follow.

Date: 2008-02-25 00:34 Subject: SGA Chat Round-Up, Part 6/? Security: Public Tags: goofy chats, sga

Yeah, I'm still putting up old chat transcripts. Let me know where you agree and disagree, eh? Here are links to Chat Batches One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.

( Outcast: The road to Rodney/Ronon/John, yis )

( Reflections on Quarantine-compliant Ronon/Keller )

( The way to John/Teyla: Goofiness )

( John's terrible romantic advice )

( A little more Outcast: Bates )

More chats to come!

Date: 2008-02-24 21:03 Subject: SGA 4x18 "Kindred, Part 1" Security: Public Tags: sga

Episode recap right here for the first half of "Kindred"( Oh my goodness, Atlantis has acquired a crystal ball! )

Date: 2008-02-22 20:01 Subject: SGA Chat Round-Up, Part 5/? Security: Public Tags: goofy chats, sga

I just love John having a crush on Ronon; see below. Here are links to Chat Batches One, Two, Three, and Four.

( John's massive crush on Ronon )

( Some thoughts on Outcast--John Sheppard: Really kind of a dick )

It's okay; we find plenty of happiness in "Outcast," too.

Date: 2008-02-22 18:13 Subject: SGA Chat Round-Up, Part 4/? Security: Public Tags: goofy chats, sga

Oh, I have a pile of these. I'm just trying to work up through the weeks till I get to my chats on "Midway." Here are links to Batches One, Two, and Three.

( Pegasus: The Galaxy That Time Forgot )

( Gives us the wig )

( The ATA gene--linked to a lack of melanin production? On the Y chromosome? )

( Seriously, girls are *icky* )

( John and the Creepy Ancients )

( Rodney's hypochondria )

( No, but, really: Why aren't these writers ever embarrassed for themselves? )