THE MEME:

1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some TV show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal.

mclachlan always has the best crack memes.

Your show is about: Our universe is oscillatory; a big bang started it and a big crunch will end it. But what of the big bangs and crunches that came before? What happened to all the previous universes? All that knowledge, all that life?

A popular high schooler wakes up one morning with all the knowledge of this universe, the previous universes, and those that will come after... making him or her the number one priority of a government agency.

( The Last Minute )

I'm going to give two weeks notice at my evil job on Friday.

It seems that life has to keep teaching me this lesson over and over and over again: Playing it safe does not lead to happiness, or even to comfort. Playing it safe leads to waking up to a job I hate, counting down the minutes until I can leave, coming home to lay in my pajamas, too tired to go out and do stuff, going to sleep without having done anything I want to do, and waking up to repeat that all over again.

I spent the last five years in Seattle realizing this, waking up to the fact that I was forever waiting for my life to magically become full and interesting without me actually reaching forward to push things in my favor.

I watch people around me everyday doing the same thing, and they mouth sayings like "You've got to live for each day!" and "Notice and enjoy the little things!" but of course they don't feel that, they don't do that. And they keep trundling on in jobs they despise, and they'll do it for decades. They all have little goals, things they want to do--lose ten pounds, visit x vacation spot, learn whatever hobby--but will never actually do. I will not allow myself to get sucked back into this useless cycle.

The good part is, everyday since I left Seattle, I look into the mirror and I like myself a little better than I did the day before. I think "What was a I thinking all those years when I hated my body and my face and my voice?" and I think "This youth is a limited resource. It will be gone in the blink of an eye and I'll look back and wonder why I never did anything with it and the waste will ache."

My trepidation about lack of security is overrun by the fear that I will waste myself, my precious minutes and days and years doing repetitive useless tasks. The tipping point has once again been reached.

I'm going to share with you my theory about why being an adult sucks more each day, why it seems like each day is less interesting than the one before:

As children, we had so little control over what went on in our lives that everything was a challenge. The very foundation of each day was made of challenge. We struggled to understand, and then to rise to the challenge, and then to bring it under our control. As adults, we've managed to sequester ourselves into little neatly-trimmed artificial worlds that we can control to an astonishing degree. When we are challenged, we're so unused to it, it feels like a crisis, a failure. It also probably doesn't help that we mostly can't run home and cry into a parent's shirt about it.

Anyway, though that (almost) absolute control of our life feels like what we want, it is most certainly not what we need. The trick is not to sequester ourselves, but to constantly expand the part of the world we inhabit. Rise to meet it, feel overwhelmed by it, learn how to incorporate it: feel alive.

I have decided this Guster song is about Castiel and Dean worrying about him falling. Observe:

Dreamt I was dead sleeping in your bed
Floated up from the ground and looked down
Then finally I could see completely
Heard the angels' song
I know what you are
I could never tell
They sang what you are
This far away, you're a miniature to me
Are you sorry you almost disappeared
Now I know what you are
I could never tell
They sang what you are
Now the notes are fading
and everything is turned around
And I can't help but think it
Its a long way down
And all the lights are changing
and everything is turned around
And I can't help but thinking
its a long way down
Now I know what you are
I could never tell
They sang what you are

I want to write a story about it but I don't know what.

SIGN UP, PEOPLE

http://community.livejournal.com/dianawynnejones/162631.html

Also, I'm wrapped in wovenindelibly's grandma's quilt with Lambrusco wine in my glass, and way too much pizza in my stomach.

There was an entertaining excursion to Whole Foods that we will not speak of, but that I'm sure the cashiers and baggers will be talking about for days to come.

That is all.

I've decided I should resuscitate my German language skills. Mostly I am lacking vocabulary, having forgotten half of what I ever learned in the first place which wasn't nearly enough, and I figured: what better way to gain it back than by reading, and since I am constantly reading fanfiction anyway, why not read German-language fanfiction? But I couldn't really find any because everybody that I know who speaks German writes their stories in English. That and I don't know the German word for fanfiction. *cough*

That is the long way of saying, do you have any fanfic recommendations auf Deutsch?

The Supernatural fan convention episode: The most entertained I've been by an episode of television as far back as I can remember.

The lulz just keep rolling out.

I just have to say, whoever does the casting on Supernatural is a genius at their job. For real. The mini Winchesters--the young ones and the teenage ones--they're SO FREAKING PERFECT! And then the kid they cast for Adam! He looks related! And the people for younger John and Mary are A++!

Seriously, this person should win awards. Lots and lots of awards!

I am exceedingly, mushily, embarrassingly in love with Misha Collins. It's unexpected to say the least, and it happened whirl-wind style and I'm not sure what to do about it. One minute I'm all reading Dean/Castiel, the next I'm googling Misha right and left and friending his twitter.

I'm sure the 99% of you that are nodding your head in agreement already know that he built his own house along with most of the furniture in it, that he seems to be a jack of all trades, that he's funny, and that oh, yeah he's hot. He shares my day of birth, not including the year! His wife is pretty much the person I want to be, and I mean that because of who she is and what she does and because she's married to him.

I need this man in my life in the event of the apocalypse.

Insert besotted sigh here.

( Gaze )

You guys, it's been nearly a year since The Stranger introduced me to this GLORIOUS VIDEO OF HILARIOUS GLORY, and I think it's time we revisited.

fragilistikal posted a cover of the new Megan Whalen Turner and the dude on the cover art reminds me of Chris Dane Evans in the video, and that made me ROTFL just thinking about it, so of course I had to go watch the video again and just...ALLIGATORS. HELICOPTER FOOTAGE! SLEIGH RIDES! ABUSE OF WIND MACHINES!

To those of you who've seen it...go! laugh all over again. And to those who haven't: You're in for a treat.

I'm feeling a little ill, but I'm inclined to blame this mostly on Paranormal Activity. Just like with the Blair Witch Project, it was difficult for me to be frightened because I had to close my eyes and choke down my nausea for so much of the movie. Still, I liked it! The filming style did make it seem very real. ( Major end-related spoilers )

Anyway, I'm super excited about Paul Bettany shirtless and possibly winged Legion. OMG WINGFIC ALL OVER THE PLACE, PLEASE!!!

The nausea has receded and I still feel a little off, so I'm drinking some EmergenC. My ear keeps popping whenever I swallow, but I think I've been fighting off the same low-grade whatever-it-is for like a week now, and so maybe this is actually coming to a head. In any case, I don't actually have any other symptoms unless you count general "I don't have any energy, but I'm pretty okay".

Yeah. I'm gonna go watch Merlin.

I feel like this is not so much what I am but what I strive to be.

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I've decided I'm going to make a list of all the things that make me twitch in a bad way that I've read in romances. Then I'm going to leave them out or do the exact opposite where I can in my NaNoWriMo. The seed of story in my head is rapidly turning toward the subversive. Good times.

- Overuse of the words "masculine" and "feminine". And really, almost any use constitutes overuse at this point, because it's been used to DEATH, and is really just gender-stereotype-shorthand and I think we all know how I feel about gender stereotypes.

- Any use of the phrase (or variants): "He smelled like X and X...and something uniquely himself." Bonus points if one X = masculine.

- The word "Panties". It shall be nowhere in anything I ever write unless it's expressly for mocking. Even the WORD makes me feel unclean in a too-much-pink-and-lace-feminine-hygiene-spray-commercial way.

- My heroine shall not have any of these jobs, or similar: Interior designer, party planner, caterer. In fact, let's rule out most small businesses and anything that could be related to weddings.

- My hero will not be any of the following: Lawyer, CEO, Navy Seal.

- Supporting characters will not be pigeon-holed into any of the following categories: Gay Best Friend. Snarky Best Girl Friend. Well-meaning Family Member. Characters may contain, incidentally, some of those characteristics. But they will not be defined by them. I hate clumsy characterization.

- My hero will at no point become a neanderthal. He may get annoyed. He may get angry, even. He will NEVER. EVER. CROSS THE LINE INTO CREEPY, WHERE HE TREATS THE HEROINE LIKE SHE DOES NOT HAVE A FUNCTIONING BRAIN AND/OR HUMAN REASONING. Relatedly, he will not fly into a jealous rage when she so much as talks to another man. Insecurity is gross. So is an uncontrollable temper. I think the fact that so many romances include it as "proof" that the hero lurves the heroine says many horrible things about what women have been conditioned by our society to accept in a mate.

- This is more of a general rule for all my writing, but my plot will not be based on A BIG MISUNDERSTANDING that could be ironed out in five minutes' worth of adult conversation.

- Neither the Hero or Heroine will have eye colors that don't occur in nature. Unless they're wearing contacts or are inherently supernatural. Silver, gold, grey-purple? These are not eye colors, these are club dress colors. There is nothing wrong with having brown eyes, okay?

- Similarly, the hero will not be large and beefy, and the heroine will not be small and waif-like and I will not focus on their relative sizes in the fetishizing-inequality way a lot of romances seem to. Men are, on the whole, slightly larger than women. This is nice! There is no need to exaggerate it to the point where the frequent mention of enormous shoulders and muscles forces me to picture Arnold Schwarzenegger's body, because frankly, Ew.

What are your guys' most hated clichés?

I've decided that I'm going to write a romance this year. I haven't decided anything else but that. Like, I don't know if it's going to be het or slash. I don't know what time period it's going to set in or if I'm going to chuck random bits of fantasy and/or scifi in there. I like to work in the dark, it makes it more interesting. But I've been meaning to try my hand at a romance for a while like when I found out the industry makes 1.37 Billion dollars a year and oh, hey, look, it's almost November!

Must start brainstorming.

Who else is doing it?

I pretty much need fic right NOW in which Merlin punishes Arthur for his untrusting asshattery *GLEE*

I HAVE MISSED THIS SHOW!!

( Spoilers for this ep, but mostly be yelling at the characters )

ETA: http://www.richardcobbett.com/codex/journal/filingcabinet/merlin_series_2_transcript/ YES TO EVERYTHING. BRILLIANT JUST WHAT I WANTED TO SAY.

I just won a pit ticket to the No Doubt show, through my obsessive internet checking. I don't care what any one says about my internet addiction, it's brought me nothing but good.

My horoscope says:

If you really knew how much you were loved, you would never cry again. A sublime relaxation would flood your nervous system, freeing you to see the beautiful secrets that your chronic fear has hidden from you. If you knew how much the world longs for your genius to bloom in its full glory, the peace that filled you would ensure you could not fail. You'd face every trial with eager equanimity. You would always know exactly what to do because your intuition would tell you in a myriad of subtle ways. And get this: A glimpse of this glory will soon be available to you.

I think this is going to be a good day.

I have 0 dreamwidth codes. Does anyone still need one?