| Eleven bucks fifty even on Tuesdays |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|12:09 am] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tarigwaemir, motorbike, your cards arrived - and that is today. XD; Nat, I'm going to figure out a way to pin your flower cookies on my bag. T_T
Avatar: this I have to hand to James Cameron: he made a three-hour movie of which every single second is predictable - not to mention eyeroll-inducing** - but that doesn't feel three hours long. Not easy, folks. I went to IMAX 3D for the eyecandy, even though eyecandy rarely saves a movie for me, and was not disappointed. What it reminded me of was Final Fantasy XII, actually. XD; Monster design, area design, everything. Three hours in the Golmore Jungle with occasional excursions onto the Ozmone Plain and wherever the frick Brujerba floated off from, in IMAX 3D and more granular by two orders of magnitude. Zoe Saldana plays Fran in shades of blue.
Now that Weta has all this fantasy dragon soulbond CG experience, a Temeraire movie ought to be a stroll in the park... right? Ahaha.
** I can't get offended, I find, because the offensive aspects (and the rest) are so last century. Heck, even the wafer-thin digital gloss is entirely 1990s (upload yr consciousness to the collective ether homg!!1!). No doubt the Internet would disabuse me of this notion if I allowed it, but I feel like even ppl who turn their brains off like their cellphones would register the script as "clichéd" if not "problematic". Only when the cringe shifts from the moral realm into the taste realm can we all move on, remember, cos those who don't give a shit what's right do give a shit what's cool. |
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| Updating |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|02:43 am] |
Thien, Val - thanks for your cards!! They'd arrived before New Year's, actually, I've just been very remiss. ♥
I've been uploading fics to my AO3 account, starting with those that for one reason or another were never archived elsewhere and have otherwise disappeared down the tubes of my LJ. So check out the link, who knows. XD; It's taking me a lot longer than it should because I keep stopping to read stuff I'd totally forgotten about. Remember "Trapped In The Closet" with Rukia as R. Kelly? Neither did I!
(There's one more biggie to go - 20 Facts About Yumichika, out of Bleach, which I never posted properly at all. Not that it's complete... maybe I should change it to one of those Five Times He Did And One Time He Didn't structures.)
The tagging/organizational system works excellently, but the real killer app here is the uploader, which does a beautiful job of cleaning up copy-paste from Word and HTML. (It doesn't like to centre my apostrophe dividers, but nothing a bit of coding can't fix.)
Doing this makes me think that a real Decade's Top Music list from me would have to take into account the tracks I write from. Just going down the list of the fourteen pieces I've uploaded, for instance: ( asterisks indicate songs actually from the past decade )
Just a different view, I guess. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|11:02 pm] |
Belated happy new year, all! Expect a slew of year in review memes and actual detailed, photo-filled accounts of the past 3 weeks to come-- I am flying back to Australia in just under two days, where I will go immediately from being very cold to being disgustingly hot! YAY. But more to the point I will go from being busy running all over Tokyo every day to summer holidays, which I expect to spend fruitfully lounging around the house watching all the TV I missed last year (there's a lot of it, because I spent most of the year in a state of permanent uni stress XD;) and playing all those video games I bought at Book Off.
... no, seriously, don't even ask. orz
On the otherhand, I've discovered a previously unconsidered upside to getting a Wii rather than a PS3: they are much smaller. Smaller to tote from Shibuya to Fuchu; smaller to stuff in one's hand luggage for the plane trip; and smaller and thus LIGHTER for hauling around four (4) airports on your back. o/
okay asjdkflsd I'm starving, I'm going to stop babbling nonsense and do a combini run. ONIGIRI! HOW I WILL MISS YOOOOOU.
PS: new years resolutions: write more. get better at keeping in contact and going out and being social. graduating and not killing my GPA in the process. actually deciding what I want to do with my life??? maybe that should have gone first... |
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| Writing roundup (so where are the Yuletides you wrote, ppl? as opposed to recs) |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|06:34 pm] |
Now I can exclusively reveal that... canis_m was right, obviously. XD
Traffic, parts V-VII [Viewfinder]
Finally.
Speak, Mirror [Black Lagoon: Yuletide gift for escalove]
I offered this because I could cheap-ass my way through it; so cheap-ass, in fact, that I wrote what amounts to a mock!canon episode. The recipient, too, was asking for stuff like evocative setting descriptions ahahaha in retrospect I'm not sure why I didn't write Malacca but call it Roanapur since it made no sense for anything to happen in Malaysia. It was meant to be Revy/Eda but the structure didn't allow for nun muffdiving. When I look at it I can see the phrasing I borrowed from Bester and Bradbury, like swiping someone else's coat for a corner store run when you can't be bothered to dig in the closet for your own.
So that's 11000 words of finished project, plus 1500-2000 words of abortive origfic fragments (mostly SSBB attempts XD). Here is one I'm likely to pursue:
( Werner moved into the new studios in March )
Conclusion: a reasonable tally, for me, and when one considers that for two years I wasn't able to write at all. No wonder, too, because it's the same energy I used to get through b-school, only turned completely inward. Writing fiction for three hours takes the same effort as sitting a three-hour exam, judging from the level of hunger it induces. ^_^; Writing for three hours every two days for two weeks is therefore as strenuous as finals period. B-school taught me to turn the tap on at will (I never thought it would help with writing, of all things), but I can't point the hose in two directions at once.
Resolution: I had a wordcount resolution for '09 and frankly forgot about it. XD; I'm reasonably certain I made it, though, if blogging counts. In early 2010 I want to finish that one Tenipuri story, and the one originally started for the SSBB fashion/dressup issue. After that... we'll see. |
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| 2009 in review |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|06:16 pm] |
Oh god all these memes are so looooooong~
January: classes! Redesigning the music industry and one marketing survey after another.
February: the great Douban sexy orz-tastic Britpop ojisan photospam event. Racefail. Hot pink leather jacket defines sartorial theme for year.
March: getting defriended due to LoudTwitter spam. Doctor Who s2. Pete Doherty's solo record.
April: Tumblr and Dreamwidth. The Alexandria Quartet (geebus I never blogged about it properly).
May: Switzerland! Graduation! Business plan competition! Shoujotastic closure to not-quite relationship. Angsting over job interviews that never led to career paths after all.
June: MUTEK, Trek, terrible un-seasonal weather.
July: Ottawa. Fantasia, forever and always. Enjoying the summer and all that, being truly poor but spending too much on clothes. Osheaga.
August: emergency room visits. Worldcon. Desultory job applications.
September: informal SF movie/book project lurches into gear. Clothing s.w.a.p.
October: moar government interview process derail job applications. Classic Trek. Social life expands like gas to fill all available space.
November: FARMVILLE. Informal NaNoWriMo participation results in finishing story started in 2005. Chinese community radio. Terrible cold.
December: Yuletide (success!). Frenzy of domesticity (will have to blog about household situation one of these days). Got done everything I wanted done, though, which is nice.
I borrowed the above format from flist ppl who used it to sum up the past decade. May try my hand at that too, eventually.
Conclusion: this year there's been a Master's degree and four not-quite relationships (varying flavours of not-quite - sorry you are not getting more than this, I is secretive!), which qualifies it for momentous but feels like a relaxed sort of busy. In retrospect one can see the lever of fannish focus flip over from Music to Science Fiction, halfway through the year. XD
Resolution: did I try new things and make new friends and change and learn and have fun? Yes, lots, but I'm still in limbo. I need to find a career (not a "job") as well as the steady income attached to it so I can fund all the cool projects I want to start. XD More on this in the decade review but my twenties have been all about self-improvement and trying to become a marginally functional non-embarrassing adult, now it's time to stop tinkering with the donut machine and actually make some donuts. |
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| 新春あほノベル New Year Silly Novel |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|03:54 pm] |
Original Japanese text from Kuwabara Mizuna's official site. A Divine Red short with special appearances by Takaya and Naoe written by sensei in February 2000 for the "Uesugi Domain Goyoutashi" (no idea what that is)
Japanese to English translation by me.
The topic: "A Certain Samegao Castle at Arai City shall be hosting the festival known as 'The Legend of Echigo's Wild Kagetora - The Winter Encampment' it seems, and apparently there is going to be a play about Kagetora during the festival."
( For more silliness )
Happy New Year!
With 25 more chapters to go (MoB Vols. 17-19), I hope to finish translating the Karin arc before the end of 2010.  |
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| I could have made a year-end list but instead I made pies |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|08:55 pm] |
Because a year-end list will not make the house smell like rum butter and orange blossom water, and therefore can wait until tomorrow. XD
Gotta finish cleaning and hie myself off to T's! Best wishes for 2010, loves; this is where the 21st century really kicks off. |
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| Still alive and kicking |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|05:40 am] |
1) SSBB on schedule? I think? (Erin?) It's a big issue too, on top of it all - almost like the good bad good old days.
2) Where do I go to download more Doctor Who? XD 2008 Christmas special through this year's, plus the Confidentials from S3 on. Sororial unit is taking off so we probably won't be watching more before NYE but we have six episodes left to S4, it's kinda epic. One of the weirder fandom experiences: I get obsessive when I'm watching it - with huge gaps in between - but self-imposed spoiler lockdown, so basically I've been stewing gently in my own juices for a year. That being said spoilers have been impossible to avoid, because the thing is so culturally pervasive it's a bit like trying not to find out who won American Idol.
I have some compare-contrast notes re the Companions to make, now that I actually have a data set. Also someone requested a FST... Circa S1 I tried to build an FST using only the British pop music on my ipod at that exact moment. Got about seven tracks in. XD;;
3) Speaking of stewing, I made... well not boeuf bourguignon, it's missing half the ingredients (last minute), so I guess just a red wine stew? Whatev it tastes good.
4) Movies!
Up In The Air: well-cast, extremely well-written, topical only in a fleetingly clever way. A romantic comedy that's ( ambiguous in its stance vis romance )
The Princess And The Frog: good movie that misses out on great. The middle section needed more surprises, perhaps; it felt perfunctory, as if by that point the script felt free to go down the list of "Disney animation" checkboxes. Helluva initial setup, though, ( sinking under the weight of its semiotics )
Sherlock Holmes: as truthful to the canon as any other adaptation, really, but made a point of playing down bits that have become screen/pastiche-canonical and playing up ones that haven't. I never cared for any screen adaptation of Holmes, they all had that uncanny-valley thing whereby they were sort of it but irritatingly not-quite, and this at least avoids that trap. XD To my unexpected gratification, the plot revolved around ( my big takeaway from reading the stories at age 4 )
I got this thing out of the library the other day: The Game Is Afoot: Parodies, Pastiches, and Ponderings of Sherlock Holmes. J.M. Barrie wrote one. Poul Anderson. Stephen Leacock. Fritz Leiber... btw if you guys missed it on my Tumblr, here is The Young Lord Peter Consults Sherlock Holmes, by D. L. Sayers. |
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| Oh and! Yuletide is open, etc. |
[Dec. 25th, 2009|11:15 pm] |
I received: The Play, the Withnail and I post-movie story I requested partly for sororial unit. I know, right? IMO this was the most difficult of the possible matches, so it was a real pleasure to find that someone had braved the finicky request to come up with a story that was sweet, funny, and very true to the canon voice. Thank you so much, Mystery Santa! ♥
There is a game that ppl play, right, where you guess which story I wrote in Yuletide? Some of you know the list of fandoms I offered, so given that it should be ridiculously easy. XD |
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| Merry Christmas all |
[Dec. 25th, 2009|03:17 am] |
We watched the Doctor Who Christmas special... from two years ago, shut up we're getting there. XD;; helvetius, your discs are the holiday gift that keeps on giving. Now that sororial unit is off we may make it through the fourth season by decade's end, and then I can actually READ SERIES DISCUSSIONS ON THE INTERNETS oh joy oh wonders, oh no wait there's more to download isn't there. orz
The s3 ending arc before that, which was kind of \o_O/. And then I had to imdb to figure out where I'd seen the dude before (sororial unit didn't know, normally with UK TV she's like "oh that one's been in Harry Potter, she played whatserface in season one of Rome, and I think I saw the other on Buzzcocks"). EDIT - re this thread, I'm still waiting for my onsen special dammit.
Holiday foodery roundup, because I know I will be looking for it next year: ( cake pan gingerbread thing )
( bacon and mushroom stuffing )
I also bought, get this, stuff for making mince pies? XD;;; It's incandescens talking about it every year, I've gone around the bend.
Lauren, Cindy, your card and postcard arrived (several days ago, I've been neglectful XD;). Thank you! ♥ |
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