A World of Random
I've missed so many birthdays, it's honestly embarrassing: botias, spikes_heart, pukajen, romanyg, dessert_first, pfeifferpack, lillianmorgan, ascian3, rikko_oko.... Very Happy Belated Birthdays to you all, and hopes for a great year ahead.
Good Christ, I'm behind on everything. I haven't even read any of the Bring Back the Porn Day entries on InsaneJournal. Something's clearly wrong with the world. Or I've just been too busy. Or both. Sigh...
coyote_william has a poll about the Slayer activiation spell: good idea or bad, morally speaking? (Not just good/bad in terms of plot device, in other words.) I've contributed to this thread a lot; I have big honking problems with "Chosen" which I apparently still need to get off my chest. Isn't it amazing how some things will nearly always draw you back into the same damn conversations?
Fic rec: We Who Are About to Die, a Spike & Anya conversation on the night before the battle of "Chosen." Really like this one, the knowing quality of it. Sublime.
Public Service Posters of the 1920s - kids, don't play on train tracks! Warning: some of the comments recount personal memories of death by train.
A little book of fish facts. Aww, cod that play safely with other cod!
The Happy Feminist reminisces about the bad, old days of housewifery as unpaid labor, taken for granted. Yes, feminism made a difference.
thisficklemob originally linked to this one: The Shock Doctrine, the behind-the-scenes philosophy that's apparently been running our lives for the past few decades. And this link, from germaine_pet, on the new book The Terror Presidency. Yikes. Answers to so many questions.
I made a note back on Labor Day, when the SciFi Channel was running a Twilight Zone-a-thon, that the entertainment I grew up on, especially filmed works and TV series from the postwar era, were far more about processing the effects of that war - Hitler, et al - than I'd ever realized. It wasn't exactly cloaked, either, just that it now looks sort of... exotic from our viewpoint, fifty years down the road. "Eye of the Beholder," the one with The Beverly Hillbillies' Ellie May Clampett playing a beautiful "ugly duckling" in a racially pure world of piglike deformities? That's a story about Hitler's eugenics program in scifi clothing - when our heroine runs down a hospital corridor in the aftermath of her final, unsuccessful attempt at plastic surgery, we see a dictator on a TV screen ranting about conformity, and how there must be only ONE standard. At the end of the episode, she's taken away to a camp to live "among your own kind." Dude. The final episode of the marathon, "The Obsolete Man," featured an even more obvious Hitler, a "Chancellor" figure eventually labeled "obsolete" by his own state, clearing the field for Rod Serling to opine that the "state" itself is also obsolete, as is any form of government that refuses to acknowledge the dignity of individual humans.
Don't I wish.
A planet where business rules apply to the Internets? Wouldn't that be something.
I also watched a Dirty Jobs-a-thon, during which I saw a commerical for an item that's being called a "pancake puffs" pan. It's really traditional pan for making Danish aebleskivers, little pancake balls which are closest in form to Japanese takoyaki, or octopus puffs. I've known this since childhood, thanks to my hometown's local summer festival, and the several stands that served this food item, tossed poppin'-fresh hot into a paper bag into which you'd ladle a few spoonfuls of powdered or brown sugar. And that's how you'd eat them, from the bag, scooping up a bit of sugar with each doughy bite. Gah, now I'm hunnnngry.
A long article-slash-review on We Love Katamari. I love the meandering train of thought, and the way it ends up analyzing the game experience in social terms. (The bit about wandering the empty world, lonely and bereft, without anything left to roll up, is particularly apt.)
Silly memeage: I did the Ollivander's wand test and ended up with a 13-inch olive-branch wand with a Kelpie hair. No idea what this signifies in the Potterverse. Perhaps I'm a wicked witch at heart. The more Potter-savvy are encouraged to enlighten me.
Motivational Posters with Sean of the Dead quotes. I think my favorite is the shot of Angel, doing his "whaaaa--?" look, "like a drunk, who's lost a bet." Hee.
I will admit to laughing hard when I read Stargate Atantis vs. BtVS/AtS. They've more in common than I ever realized! And now I have this strange craving for Rodney/Spike fic.
Firt crackers4jenn posted a clip from the As You Were dailies and then molly_may weighed in with more from As You Were plus Wrecked. I haven't watched a lot of the dailies before. OMG, those are some lovely facial expressions. I do miss my Spuffy. Sigh...
I signed up for ruuger's Buffy is the Hero, Dammit! ficathon. Because I am insane, and don't have enough WIPs to work on. And I signed up for seraphcelene's Fic Meta-a-Thon too. Because I am INSANE. Clearly.
But on that note:
Poll What Should I Do in the Meta-Thon?
Good Christ, I'm behind on everything. I haven't even read any of the Bring Back the Porn Day entries on InsaneJournal. Something's clearly wrong with the world. Or I've just been too busy. Or both. Sigh...
coyote_william has a poll about the Slayer activiation spell: good idea or bad, morally speaking? (Not just good/bad in terms of plot device, in other words.) I've contributed to this thread a lot; I have big honking problems with "Chosen" which I apparently still need to get off my chest. Isn't it amazing how some things will nearly always draw you back into the same damn conversations?
Fic rec: We Who Are About to Die, a Spike & Anya conversation on the night before the battle of "Chosen." Really like this one, the knowing quality of it. Sublime.
Public Service Posters of the 1920s - kids, don't play on train tracks! Warning: some of the comments recount personal memories of death by train.
A little book of fish facts. Aww, cod that play safely with other cod!
The Happy Feminist reminisces about the bad, old days of housewifery as unpaid labor, taken for granted. Yes, feminism made a difference.
thisficklemob originally linked to this one: The Shock Doctrine, the behind-the-scenes philosophy that's apparently been running our lives for the past few decades. And this link, from germaine_pet, on the new book The Terror Presidency. Yikes. Answers to so many questions.
I made a note back on Labor Day, when the SciFi Channel was running a Twilight Zone-a-thon, that the entertainment I grew up on, especially filmed works and TV series from the postwar era, were far more about processing the effects of that war - Hitler, et al - than I'd ever realized. It wasn't exactly cloaked, either, just that it now looks sort of... exotic from our viewpoint, fifty years down the road. "Eye of the Beholder," the one with The Beverly Hillbillies' Ellie May Clampett playing a beautiful "ugly duckling" in a racially pure world of piglike deformities? That's a story about Hitler's eugenics program in scifi clothing - when our heroine runs down a hospital corridor in the aftermath of her final, unsuccessful attempt at plastic surgery, we see a dictator on a TV screen ranting about conformity, and how there must be only ONE standard. At the end of the episode, she's taken away to a camp to live "among your own kind." Dude. The final episode of the marathon, "The Obsolete Man," featured an even more obvious Hitler, a "Chancellor" figure eventually labeled "obsolete" by his own state, clearing the field for Rod Serling to opine that the "state" itself is also obsolete, as is any form of government that refuses to acknowledge the dignity of individual humans.
Don't I wish.
A planet where business rules apply to the Internets? Wouldn't that be something.
I also watched a Dirty Jobs-a-thon, during which I saw a commerical for an item that's being called a "pancake puffs" pan. It's really traditional pan for making Danish aebleskivers, little pancake balls which are closest in form to Japanese takoyaki, or octopus puffs. I've known this since childhood, thanks to my hometown's local summer festival, and the several stands that served this food item, tossed poppin'-fresh hot into a paper bag into which you'd ladle a few spoonfuls of powdered or brown sugar. And that's how you'd eat them, from the bag, scooping up a bit of sugar with each doughy bite. Gah, now I'm hunnnngry.
A long article-slash-review on We Love Katamari. I love the meandering train of thought, and the way it ends up analyzing the game experience in social terms. (The bit about wandering the empty world, lonely and bereft, without anything left to roll up, is particularly apt.)
Silly memeage: I did the Ollivander's wand test and ended up with a 13-inch olive-branch wand with a Kelpie hair. No idea what this signifies in the Potterverse. Perhaps I'm a wicked witch at heart. The more Potter-savvy are encouraged to enlighten me.
Motivational Posters with Sean of the Dead quotes. I think my favorite is the shot of Angel, doing his "whaaaa--?" look, "like a drunk, who's lost a bet." Hee.
I will admit to laughing hard when I read Stargate Atantis vs. BtVS/AtS. They've more in common than I ever realized! And now I have this strange craving for Rodney/Spike fic.
Firt crackers4jenn posted a clip from the As You Were dailies and then molly_may weighed in with more from As You Were plus Wrecked. I haven't watched a lot of the dailies before. OMG, those are some lovely facial expressions. I do miss my Spuffy. Sigh...
I signed up for ruuger's Buffy is the Hero, Dammit! ficathon. Because I am insane, and don't have enough WIPs to work on. And I signed up for seraphcelene's Fic Meta-a-Thon too. Because I am INSANE. Clearly.
But on that note:
Poll What Should I Do in the Meta-Thon?