holdouttrout

I need fast-paced songs to walk to that have no lyrics, have fairly incomprehensible lyrics, or have lyrics in a foreign language that I will not be tempted to start singing to as I walk in the early morning. (Humming, unfortunately, will continue to be a risk, but that's my problem.) Preferably songs that evoke some kind of bad-assery, as in "Why yes, I DO know how to use this," or "Are you sure you want to try to take over the world while I'm still alive?" or "In fact, I AM the sexiest person in the universe."

I have a few songs like this in a playlist already, but I find myself needing more... any suggestions?

Back in the day--okay, not that far back--let's go with a few years ago, I had a geocities page. It was not nearly as fun or bedecked as everyone else's page, but it served my evil purposes. Which was, mainly, to put up original fic. I kinda cringe at that, now, because man, was that stuff bad. Throughout the years, my very changeable page served to host a few pictures of my travels and a travel log, some horrendous poetry, and, finally, a mirror of my delicious tags. As far as I'm aware, no one ever actually read my website. *grins*

Anyway, I got notice geocities was closing, but it seemed like too much work to transfer everything anywhere else, and downloading proved to be a frustrating and somewhat worthless endeavor, as everything I had on the site I can either find again on some hard drive or disk or disc, don't care about seeing ever again, or have in a hard copy format. (And no, there was no fic on there, except fic that can also be found elsewhere online, and fic that was written before I graduated HIGH SCHOOL. We do not speak of this.)

However, in honor of the end of an era, I link you to this tribute: The Internet's Lament.

cleolinda's twitter directed me to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which is a free online YA novel, and is still in progress, unfortunately enough, because I spent quite a while reading it and now I want to know how it ends. I found myself quite drawn in by the description and whimsy of the characters--and the narrator. I love narrators who have a sense of humor.

How many of you, like me, have a few old T-shirts that you will never wear but can't quite bear to throw out because they were the apartment shirt your junior year in college, and you liked that apartment a lot? I was finally fed up enough with them that I googled, trying to find some idea of how to recycle them, since I don't think Goodwill would do a very good job of wanting them, and found this idea for turning them into shopping bags. (Also, if there are other ideas for recycling old T-shirts, let me know in the comments.)

My question, brought on by boredom and a leftover cupcake from yesterday's birthday celebration, is this:

Would Jack count cupcakes as cake?

Because they really are cake, in one sense, but...they're cupcakes. I never think of cake and cupcakes as essentially the same thing, even though they are.

Right?

And now I've decided I want cake-themed fic. *trundles off to search the web*

Okay, so this post makes me look crazy, too, but trust me, the other one was crazier.

ETA: Wait! Have a couple of sweets before you go. I'll share! I'm nice!

A Stargate-Themed Wedding Cake.
aurora_novarum wrote What Would Jack Do? (A series of ficlets) that mentions cake. A lot. *grins*
aurora_novarum also wrote The Lollipop Guild, which ALSO mentions cake.
Jojo wrote Just Don't Eat the Cake, which is Sam/Jack under the influence of really delicious pastry, and one of the most hilarious fics EVER.

I don't know how many of you have used or want to use Scrivener. It's a writing program for the Mac, one that I've heard about but haven't used. Anyway, right now they're doing a special promotion for NaNoWriMo, where the free trial lasts from now until December 7, and if you win NaNo, you get 50% off. You can get the details here.

Two Recs:

rowan_d wrote a STARGATE fic. Like Fire on Wind, which is broken Sam and angsty and lovely. It's Sam/Jack, although I felt it could possibly be read as friendship, (as long as you read everyone in love with everyone else, like I do). Rowan took Sam's tendency to pessimism and wove it into a fic where Sam is alienated from the team by her own feelings and actions.

The second one is a much older fic--really a series, but I just re-read it and just...love it to pieces. cofax7's This is Not Wartime. OT3 (Sam/Jack/Daniel) apocafic set after season 7, where the team is all broken and adrift and trying desperately to eke out a victory against the Goa'uld who have conquered Earth.

Some people have thinky-thoughts about episodes of TV shows. I... don't. Just so you're warned. Cuts are for spoilers and not length. And they're not really about spoilers, either.

( SGU: Darkness )

( Santuary: End of Nights, Part 2 )

annerbhp told me to be in bed no later than 38 minutes ago, but I'm risking her wrath to bring you the icon I used for this post (made by me, and yes, shareable) and a list of the things I did today:

• Went to the opera (Tosca, and actually a satellite feed of a live opera from the Met).
  
• shopped and bought myself an amazing new jacket, deep blue (almost purple) velveteen-y fabric, with the double buttons. It was LOVE, people.
  
• Made quinoa.
  
• Made cinnamon rolls.
  
• Watched SGU (needs more sauce (no, I don't know what that means, either)), Sanctuary (YAY!), and CSI (OMG WHERE IS MY GEEK LOVE???).
  
• Did laundry.
  
• Swept kitchen.
  
• Stayed up past my bedtime.
  

In the order of cool, I bring you: In B Flat, which is a youtube interactive experiment thing, and it's awesome. VERY video heavy.

Title: Sam and Vala: Five Bonding Activities
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Sam/Vala in 1, 3, and 4. Sam and Vala friendship in 2 and 5.
Rating: PG-13 for vague smut and lingerie talk, as well as some zombie blood and gore.
Notes: A humorous little five things I wrote way back when and just now attempted to clean up so I could post it for ultranos_fic's birthday. I'm coming in just under the wire... in my timezone, at least. *g*


( Sam and Vala: Five Bonding Activities )

******

At the beginning of the year, when I was still trying to write 200,000 words (At July 1, with just over 100,000, I decided not to risk my sanity and stopped worrying about wordcount*), I wasn't really paying much attention to what I wrote, or worrying about finishing things as much as just writing them. I also was writing a lot in Google Docs, and not tagging things like I should have.

Then, of course, I was busy trying to finish the sjficathon fic (And Then I Dreamt of Yes), and so I was working in one (maybe two) files and not paying attention to the rest.

Yesterday I went through my Google Docs and tagged things. Tons of things. And I think I found a few that I could potentially work on and/or declare amnesty on. (Yay!)

I also found FOURTEEN separate files with various bits and pieces of the various ideas I had for the sjficathon fic. FOURTEEN. Many of them have variations on the theme I finally used, but there are tons of scenes that just didn't work, and some hilarious sketches of ideas I thought I was going to write. And that doesn't count any that were on my hard drive.

( Here's the shortest file and some more thoughts about writing )

So that's what I did this weekend, at least if you're not counting normal, boring, everyday life sort of things. Like laundry.



*Don't ask me why I'm planning on doing NaNo if I was stressed out by GYWO, but I am. I'm fairly sure it's Annerb's fault.

First of all, a very happy birthday to aurora_novarum, who has been awesome these past few weeks in keeping me entertained, and listened to me marvel about my cat more than once. Seriously, she really is just that nice.

Second, I bring fic! (Alas! No cake on the internets.)

Title: Five People (or Beings) Who Inhabit the SGC
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Category: Gen, OCs
Rating: PG for a brief mention of mating rituals
Summary: I got to thinking about how lucky SG-1 was that they never had anything that transformed them permanently, and how there must be a few SGC personnel who weren't so lucky. Thus this was born.


( Fic Ahoy! (no, there are no pirates) )

But pretty awesome anyway.

Jorge Garcia's Fanmail

Warning: contains nudity and unicorns and yet manages to be worksafe (depending on your work, I suppose). I know, I don't understand it either.

ETA: My cat (my roommate's cat, really) has apparently decided that my emery board is her new toy. I noticed her playing with it so I picked it up and put it in a cup on the coffee table. Not two seconds later she's got it back out again.

My cat is too smart.

There was a security issue yesterday/this morning with lj. This post has more information, as does the lj news post. I found that my journal was affected; I have removed the afflicting code from my latest posts, and checked to make sure my security settings were correct on my most recent posts.

Does anyone know what it means they got my e-mail address? That's the only part I'm confused about. You know, in some ways, I'm a fairly good computer/internet user, and in other ways, I'm so completely ignorant it's not even funny.

Also, just to let you know in case you're worried*, I do use ljtoys (when I remember to add moods to posts and then remember to log in to ljtoys often enough), because I get a weird thrill from seeing the number of hits soar after each post I make. In the first two weeks I used it, I checked who was reading, too, but that's a little obsessive even for me, and didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know based on comments. *g*

*I can't quite figure out if there was a security issue with ljtoys or not, but where it's noted in those posts it's crossed out. I am, however, leaving it off this post.

Remember this meme? It took me a long, long time to get it done, but I did not forget! Mwa ha ha.

Below the cut are my responses to the following prompts:
Top five moments when the odds are stacked against SG-1
Top five Sam/Teal'c moments
Top five Sam and Vala moments
Top five moments that made you need to write fic THAT VERY SECOND.
Top five 'almost' moments
Top five fic cliches
Top five Vala moments

( Top fives )

Each day of being sick brings a new and inventive horror. Today, it's a headache with coughing, and some kind of weird backache for no reason I can reason out. I'm doing my best to avoid coughing, which seems to help a bit. As long as I don't lay down.

Also: I have been informed that you're not supposed to do chores when sick, where chores means doing laundry and/or vacuuming. But I say that even when sick, and maybe especially when sick, things sticking to the bottom of feet is really, really, really annoying. And also laundry is not that difficult. Taking showers is way harder.

Don't take showers when you're sick. Unless someone is home to drag your naked, wet body out of the bathroom when you faint.

Not that I did that*.

I have been using my time home wisely and watching a ton of SG-1. I decided I needed to see all ten seasons from the beginning, in order, which is a new experience for me. So I started with CotG on Saturday and am now in the middle of "Bane."

( rambling about episodes )


*I actually didn't do that. Faint, I mean. I did take a shower, which was a mistake today. Yesterday, however, it was bliss.

It's fignewton's birthday today, and in typical fashion, she's the one giving out the gifts! She wrote a lovely Jack and Daniel fic, Waiting for Daniel, spoilers through season 6.

And in honor of her birthday, I raided the remaining prompts from the jacksamfriends ficathon and wrote a little ficlet.

Title: Twelve Down
Characters/Category: Jack and Sam Friendship
Summary: From the jacksamfriends prompt: 12. "I knew I shouldn't have answered my phone this morning."
Rating: G
Words: 305

( Twelve Down )

Title: And Then I Dreamt of Yes
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/Jack.
Category: Angsty fluff.
For: the 2009 sjficathon, written for nandamai, who requested: "S/J stranded, preferably in S9-10."
Summary: The universe has really bad timing, but neither Sam or Jack is ready to give it the last word.
Notes: My never-ending thanks to pepper_field, who read the second-to-last draft and didn't tell me it sucked but made me see the light anyway and then read the last draft and reassured me it was much better. Also thanks to annerbhp, who dealt with my title issues again, and to everyone who I whined to over the last...well, however long it was. You are all awesome.


( Story Below the Cut )

Seeing as I'm sick, and was whining about it to annerbhp, she told me that I should milk it for all its worth. Her idea was that I ask for "picspams and comment fic to entertain [me]," which I think is fairly fabulous.

So that's your assignment. Write ficlets about how awesome the team is, or how Teal'c pwns everyone during the zombie sheep epidemic of 2004, or how Sam and Thor finally got their groove on. Or anything else that hits you like the swine flu on a Saturday night. (Stargate, in other words, is NOT the only fandom in the universe, and I'll happily take zombie-sheep-swine-flu stories from any fandom you love.)

Or post pictures of the hawt. Any hawt: boy, girl, machine, tissue boxes, or furniture/home deco porn.

If you would, please use the subject line to describe your fandom (if any), the pairing (if any), and the rating. Let's keep pictures PG-13 or below, please. All ratings of fiction allowed, as long as you warn appropriately.

Don't let me forget: I have to take pictures of my newest sewing project and share them. (I just need to take the pics when it is actually light out.)

Also, sekrit note to annienau08: It's September 11 already. Don't think I've forgotten about October.

Okay, for the fun stuff.

1) annerbhp has posted the Prologue for The Raggedy Edge, the Firefly/SG-1 crossover she wrote for MEEEE! She has promised not to torture y'all too much by posting too slowly, so you should be able to read as it goes, or wait just a little and get it all at once.

2) dsudis wrote Careful Where You Touch, which is about Sam/Vala and a lot of stupid rules. It's fun, and there's a lot of teamy goodness, too, which I find AWESOME in ship fic.

3) annerbhp pointed me to Rumors of My Demise, by Dee. It's a Star Wars fic, and it's Padme/Obi-Wan, which is a secret guilty pairing of mine, and it's a fix-it for Revenge of the Sith.

4) I thought this was a hilarious article about Dragon*Con.

So I get home from work, and A tells me, "Oh, by the way, you have a package."

Me: "Huh?"

A: "Yeah. Kinda a letter package thing."

Me: "Huh. Well, probably something boring." I wander over to the kitchen table, pick up this picture, and it feels kinda like...a book? Weird. It's a softcover, so I wobble it for a couple of seconds. I take it with me back to my room and stop for a brief second to check on my other roommate, G, who has the swine flu. No, really. Well, probably, anyway.

Her: "I feel less like dying today!"

Me: "Awesome!" Suddenly, I have a thought. This package in my hand HAS to be from someone in fandom. Oooh. "Hey, G. I'm gonna open this here, yes? Because in about two seconds I think I'm going to have to squee to someone."

Her: "Heh."

Me: *opens package and flips open the spiral-bound book inside to squint out the dimly-lit letters* "The Raggedy Edge" by...Annerb, a Firefly/SG-1 crossover. ... "SQUEEEEEE!!!"

Yes. TWO YEARS AGO, I won annerbhp in Sweet Charity, and told her to write me the fic I currently have IN MY HANDS. I am SO EXCITED to read it. Oh my goodness. Also, it came with TWO CDs of bonus features--BONUS FEATURES.

I squeed way more than I thought I would.

Now if I can just keep myself from reading it until after I've worked on *ahem* my current project. I'm totally distracted, though. *grins*

I'm house sitting again, which is going to be more fun this time, even considering the fact I have to give the dog pills, because this time it is not going to be 90-100 degrees every day while I walk the dog. YAY!

I'm just crossing my fingers I can log onto their internet. It *should* work, anyway.

Work is stupid. Well, my job itself is fine--lots of crazy stuff going on, but I'm framing it as an "interesting challenge requiring endurance" and so far that's helping. *g* I even have a new computer to help me through the madness, only apparently TPTB have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that I do not actually need Adobe Acrobat.

Um. Yeah. I REALLY DO. (There are a few features that I use(d) all the time that you cannot get for free on the internet like their helpful FAQ doc suggests.)

I'm calling tomorrow to speak with people and give them a piece of my mind.

MORE IMPORTANTLY.

nandamai WROTE WINGFIC. Only not. :-) But it is cute, funny, and all-around awesome, and if you like Moebius Sam/Jack, you need to go read it immediately (if you haven't already). Minos Does Not Rule the Skies, PG.

I tell you, the best part about this last week? TONS of ficlets from Nanda. (I mean, besides my friend's baby shower, which was pretty awesome, and not just because she is the first really close friend to be pregnant OMG. She had a whole Dr. Seuss thing, and it counteracted the pink overload nicely. (Seriously, so much pink.))

There will be a con report coming (AMANDA TAPPING SQUEE!!!) sometime soon-ish, I'm sure, but in the meantime, can you help a girl out? I promised annienau08 that I would send her a link to a fic, except I can't remember the title or the author.

Here's what I know:

It's Sam/Jack AMTDI, with lots of angst, and a little hint of at least Daniel being jealous, It's fairly awkward sex, too, until the aliens add a little something to the incense to make things go more smoothly. Um. I think there was something about Jack being Sam's consort, which makes it sound like badfic, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't at all.

:-D

GUYS IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY.