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?

I lose internet for four days and PANIC AT THE DISCO DISBAND???? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!

Now I'm parked in some semi-sketchy neighborhood pirating internet. Tomorrow I will have home internet back again, for the price of $95 installation and $56 a month. That's right, AT&T like an abusive drug dealer, will be taking me and my roommate for all we are worth. I hate them with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

On the bright side, I'm tanner, and I've been in the water almost every day for the past week.

Now I have to drive home and go to sleep.

List 10 of your favorite characters from different fandoms, and ask people to spot patterns in your choices, and if they're so inclined, to draw conclusions about you based on the patterns they've spotted.

1) Brian - Queer as Folk (Seasons 1-3)
2) Seth Cohen - The OC (Seasons 1-2)
3) Jareth - Labyrinth
4) Rose - Doctor Who
5) Dean - Supernatural
6) Jack - SG-1
7) Brendon - PatD/Bandom
8) Fiona - Burn Notice (to be fair, I've barely dabbled in the fandom)
9) Ianto - Torchwood
10) Merlin - Merlin (Choose a favorite between Arthur and Merlin is like choosing a favorite child, so it isn't entirely accurate to say either of them is my one and only.)

Yesterday I lounged around at my apartment until 3 or so, and then THE INTERNET WENT OUT AGAIN. Honestly, I almost think the horrible internet is the doings of some tough-love higher power who is smacking themselves in the forehead going "She's still in her underwear, and hasn't spoken to a single soul or done anything of significance today! That's it, I'm knocking the internet out again."

Because then I got dressed and in the car not knowing where I was going and low and behold I just kept driving until I ended up in Santa Monica again. Well, after a minor car accident. I was turning off the freeway and the car in front of me was NOT TURNING. Inspite of TONS of opportunities. I thought it was some exceedingly elderly person. I was looking at the coming cars OR LACK THERE OF, and I saw a huge opening and I figured the person in front of me was going to take it, and I wanted to take it too, because there was plenty of room. So I hit the gas and slammed right into them because SHE WAS A MORON AND WAS NOT TAKING THE HUGE OPENING. We pulled off glanced at our bumpers and could not see a damned thing. She was around my age. Not old at all. I felt sheepish and apologetic but also I wanted to be like "You should not be driving in LA if you cannot take a goddamned right turn. Do you see how many cars are behind us?"

Anyway, this time I parked ten blocks from the beach where the parking is free and walked over. It was a pleasant walk. I went down to the sand as the tide was coming in and accidentally got soaked up to the waist. Then I sat on the beach and dried, even though it was kind of cold, and everything shifted to me feeling right with the world.

My old need for a lot of alone time has changed: I need to stop letting myself be alone. I get all paranoid and closed-in when I do it for entire days, and everything starts to seem like too much effort again.

Anyway, I had been planning to come to the beach on Sunday because I knew it was going to be sunny again, and since the internet was still out this morning, I did not hesitate. I am at 'my' coffee bean listening to buskers and people watching, and soon I will head down to the warm sand. I find it is quite impossible to be unhappy while sitting directly in front of the ocean, like the sound of the waves crushes the bad thoughts.

I will close with this entirely random segue: I love my refrigerator. It keeps things fresh FOREVER. I have strawberries in there from three weeks ago and while they are a little shrively, there is NO MOLD at all! I love this dry climate. LOVE. I'm making strawberry muffins tonight.

The internet, through a completely unrelated search, is trying to tell me that Neil Gaiman is a scientologist. Is this true?

Forgive Durden was excellent!

( Read on )

She sent me ( this! )

I'm keeping up on you people's lives. Just not commenting. If I commented, I'd never leave the Starbucks/library/provider of public wifi.

Today went surprisingly fast. I untangled necklaces for like, two hours, and that took a nice chunk of time off my day. I don't mind that--it requires concentration and I can listen to my ipod for hours.

Speaking of music, the Logan at my work (not my sister) gave me a bunch of music. He's a certified music nerd/snob, so I'm looking forward to digging through it. We talked about bands we mutually like, like Cibo Matto and Lush, and the experimental Genesis stuff, so I'm sure he took that into account with what he gave me.

Not much else to say. I really have to pee, but in order to do so, I'd have to pack all my shit up and tote it with me to the bathroom and then hope that my chair didn't get taken, so I'm holding it for as long as possible.

CURSE YOU, AT&T!!!!111 I think I might get that on a t-shirt, I feel it so emphatically.

This is probably not a good time for me to be between health insurance providers, is it?

But considering I sucked it up and asked my parents for help with my rent until I get my next pay check, I literally can't afford to make a payment to get any.

Also, any talk of a pandemic immediately makes me think of The Stand. *Warily watches out for Randall Flagg*

In other news, it is delightfully sunny and warm, I have a big chunk of smoked gouda for lunch, and I've been actually using Goodreads since without money, reading becomes even more attractive as a leisure activity.

jenepherre and I went and saw Boxer Rebellion at the Troubadour on Tuesday, then Depeche Mode on Hollywood & Vine on Thursday. Both excellent, although I could actually see the former. The latter was just a giant stage with some tiny people on it. Still! I've heard "Enjoy the Silence" and "Personal Jesus" live! For free!

Cross your fingers that I don't get the Swine flu and die a tragic death, just as I've finally become warm.

I'm suddenly in a mood for semi-classical, instrumental music. Maybe some classical guitar.

Something like Uphill Battle by Sarah McLachlan. Anybody have artists or even just single songs vaguely like that?

Eta: song link fixed, thanks katya23

Amazon Rank.

Oh, Amazon.

( Spoilers for the last two eps )

Okay, now that I've wasted half my day watching Dollhouse in my underwear, perhaps I should get dressed and go forth into the world.

Happy birthday, katya23!!