✯ STRIKE ✯ A ✯ VIOLENT ✯ POSE ✯
✰ You're Never Gonna Fit In Much, Kid ✰
✬ THE BOYS & GIRLS IN THE CLIQUE ✬ 
5th-Nov-2009 08:37 pm - Fanfiction.net Meme
I stole this from [info]galuxkitty.

Read more... )
5th-Nov-2009 03:27 pm - *typing away madly at the screen*

5000 / 50000 words. 10% done!

I'm behind on my word count still but I got 2,000 words typed for it already and I'll be getting more done soon. I hope.

I finished my late fandom obligation which finally when I only had 100 words left to type, I finally knew what I wanted to write so someday soon I'll have to finish that but I have other fandom obligations ready to type. So... it'll have to wait now that I posted the rough draft.

I've got a fic rough draft due tomorrow that's gone from 0 words to 1,000 words. I've only got 4,000 words left to write. And I've got more caffeine, guarana, ginseng, B vitamins and other goodness in me than I know what to do with.

I have two more fest fics in various states of doneness that need to be typed and finished.

Off I go to strain my wrists as much as I strained my legs yesterday. Ian and I took a four mile walk to his work and back. My legs are still sore although we did do our usual bare minimum walk this morning.

My eyes are blurry and I'm energized tired but I'm going to keep swimming.
5th-Nov-2009 01:51 pm - Fic: Only Forever (Part one) (Doctor Who/Labyrinth: 10/Rose, Jareth/Sarah)
Title: Only Forever: An Underground Gallifreyan Fairy Tale
Author: Dani Meows
Fandom/Pairing: Doctor Who: 10/Rose Labyrinth: Jareth/Sarah
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance/Humor
Word Count: 5,244 (And incomplete)
Summary: After Jackie wishes a teenage Rose away, Rose gets a second childhood with the King of the Goblins, Jareth and Sarah Williams. At her second sixteenth birthday Rose meets the Doctor and the two of them connect. But Jareth doesn't approve and the Master wants revenge.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, if I did Rose Tyler and the Doctor would be traveling through time and space forever. I also don't own the Labyrinth or Jareth and Sarah would have ended up together.
Beta: I claim every misplaced comma and awkward sentence as my own.
Notes: This story is a very late story for October's T_31 big bang deadline. I suck. I'm sorry.
It's also incomplete. I have more ideas for what I'll be writing but I finally got it to 5,000 words and I want to get it posted.
Feedback: Please! I could use some thoughts on what I should improve when I edit this and add more chapters. Also just one comment keeps me writing. *Looks cute and mostly harmless*

The last thing she expected was a man who looked like David Bowie, with wild blond spiky hair that looked like he was from the 80's, with eye glitter wearing a pair of tights, in which you could see either his assets or a sock, and wearing a poets shirt with frilly sleeves. Grabbing her glass she prepared to lob it at the intruder even as she screamed,  )
3rd-Nov-2009 10:54 pm - YACAS Vol. II
So, here's this year's NaNo and all its glory. Or not so much glory. Totally up for you all to decide.

Title: YACAS Vol. II
Chapters: 1-3
Author: [Bad username: ”canyouhearmeyet”] (because it's the one I redirect everyone to...)
Pairing None yet.
Warnings: Grammar errors, spelling errors, major plot hole possibilities, cursing, violence, and my muse and her crack ass.
Rating PG-16 (may go up due to violence in later chapters)
Summery: Clyde, Rowan, and Fairfax finally escape their exile, and find their back to their home world; Atlinthaea. However, instead of the centuries that have passed on the other plane, only six months have passed here, in which Faolan, the wolven conquerer has pretty much devastated Clyde's country. So begins Clyde's struggle to take back the throne, and save his country from the ruin that he feared.
Disclaimer: This wonderful crack plot is MINE. The characters? MINE. Besides, who would want to steal this anyway?
Previous Chapters: N/A

Chapter One )

Chapter Two )

Chapter Three )

Peace,

off to write more psycho
3rd-Nov-2009 08:37 am - My mother woke me Up *insert the tears*
So yea, I'm a awake but a but grouchy. Both my mom and my dad have very early morning exercise and be at work schedules. I'm glad that they're exercising and not letting their lack of weight loss put them off their diets or exercise routine. I don't mind being vaguely awake and aware of those grumblings when they're moving around. I don't really mind when they call out to talk to me and make me fully awake either but I can't fall back asleep and when they leave I'm just tired and grouchy with nothing to do

It's all good, I'll drink tea later and life will pick up.

As a side note now that my facebook picture hunt addiction is over and my try to revive the insanejournal has proven it's not enough (can only post so often, sometimes I have nothing to say, not committed enough for a nanowrite, and can only respond to some friends and coms) I am addicted to facebook apps. I've got cafe world, farmville, fish town, and happy fish. I have others that I tried and just didn't make it to the temp addiction phase. So yeah I'm a little lame.

Moved around all my icons again. Since I only have about 100 free slots whenever I plan a massive update I delete a few I'm not using and add in the newbies. Sometimes i have more space at the end of the swap around. My fannish icons are getting less and less these days but I think that's because I'm not participating in the fandom as much as I should/thought I would. Need to find some Dollhouse and Fringe groups stat.

In other related notes, I've been slowly backdating old journals I never posted because I didn't have internet and journals I wrote by hand.  While going through my Senior high school journal I realized that beyond being pretentious and righteous and a know it all I sometimes had interesting thoughts and connections, but there's a lot of muck to rake through first.  

Also thanks to my backdating, all my Wyoming journals are off the first page of my journal.   There's more in between I should type in but I'm stuck at a particularly angsty journal I don't want to write in or look at again maybe ever. C'est la vie. 

Finished my application for an educator's liscence.  Hopefully the second set of tests will be worked up and graded soon and I'll have everything I need to start applying for jobs.  It's not an ideal time to hunt but we've all got our crosses to bear on that front.  Minimally tutoring of some sort should be approachable.
3rd-Nov-2009 09:12 am - Fic: Never Did Run Smooth (Doctor Who: 10/Rose)
Title: Never Did Run Smooth
Author: Dani Meows
Fandom/Pairing: Doctor Who: 10/Rose
Rating: PG-13 or R-ish.. I don't quite get rating systems.
Genre: Romance/angst
Word Count: 5,077
Summary: After the events of the Girl In The Fireplace, the Doctor and Rose are feeling distant from one another. The Doctor realizes his feelings for Rose and wants to win her heart but a pretty boy is calling.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, if I did Rose Tyler and the Doctor would be traveling through time and space forever.
Beta: I claim every misplaced comma and awkward sentence as my own.
Notes: This story is a very late story for October's T_31 big bang deadline. I suck. I'm sorry. The other late one will be up as soon as the last five hundred words come to me. All sorts of bad things happened while I was trying to write this from health problems to computer problems but it's finally done!
Feedback: Please! I haven't got much feedback lately and it's making me wonder if I'm doing something wrong!


Rassilion's lacy black knickers! If he'd just told Rose any of those times that he'd wanted to tell her then he wouldn't have to worry about.... “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” the boy asked, his voice sounded smug much to the Doctor's annoyance. “Oh I'd love to!” Rose replied. She didn't seem to notice either the boys smug tone or the Doctor's irritated face. That. )
3rd-Nov-2009 03:01 am - Just a very quick post: mostly begging and nerves
Sorry about the lack of commenting.... I've been busy writing up a storm and then soaking my wrists in Epsom salts.... I will comment on posts soon though, probably not today though since my head feels like it's about to burst through my eyeballs and I hurt quite badly. I've also not hit my word count goal for Nano today and I have lots of writing to do.


Mostly this is a quick post with a plea:

I need your help... I need a beta reader for four separate fest fic stories... and I need some people to calm me down about my anxiety for the fests. I'm getting so nervous that my writing sucks and that those who were unfortunate enough to draw my name are going to be disappointed. I'm getting scared to the point that I'm thinking about abandoning fandom just to avoid the shame of not turning anything in although I've got two of the four fics finished and done with both the hand written drafts and the typed draft. So I could use some reassurance.

Now onto the few details about the fics that I can share without giving away to much.

Very slight details about the fics:

1.) Involves Snape and Harry- isn't slash... is either Gen or preslash depending on how strong your slash goggles are. (Written and typed)

2.) Harry/Hermione- Porn (Written and typed)

3.) Luna/Hermione- Porn (Written)

4.) Harry/Hermione/Ron- Might be porn... I'm still working on this one...

If anyone could please help me out it would be very much appreciated. My husband refuses to read slash so my usual, I can't find a beta reader will you help me, helper can't help for most of these.

I've got two fics that I'll be posting today before I go to bed (10am EST) so I apologize for taking up three spaces on your friends page.
2nd-Nov-2009 02:17 pm - pumpkin scones and horror cake

After several years of not cooking, I’ve been getting back into it lately.  I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I have people to cook for.  In Chicago I was pretty much on my own and limited my culinary activities to making myself salads.  Now however, I have my grandmother and parents in close proximity and willing to eat whatever I prepare. 

 

My mother writes and self-publishes books about local history.  She’s planning a party in about two weeks to thank the people who helped her on her latest book.  Since she doesn’t like cooking and I do I’m going to be doing a lot of the food preparation.  The tea I went to on Halloween gave me some great ideas (glazed pumpkin scones, walnut bread with cream cheese and apple slices, pumpkin pie meringues) and I’ve also been watching Food Network for inspiration.

 

Last night I was watching a Halloween themed “Horror Cake Challenge” and I was surprised to see a familiar face.  One of the competing chefs was Michelle Garcia from Bleeding Heart Bakery.  Bleeding Heart is a funky organic bakery in Chicago.  They were originally located in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood right down the street from my sister’s place then a couple years ago they moved to Damen and Belmont, only a couple blocks from the Whole Foods where I worked.  Michelle occasionally came into the market.  She was easy to recognize with her pink dreadlocks and prominent tattoos of mixing bowls and egg beaters.  Unfortunately Michelle didn’t win the Challenge or the $10,000 prize but I always considered her to be a local celebrity of my Chicago days so it was ever so cool to see her on national TV. 

2nd-Nov-2009 12:11 am - NaNo Begins!


First day's work posted
1st-Nov-2009 07:35 pm - Today
I was all set to spend today cleaning, except then I developed the headache from Hades after going to the grocery store -- the same one that kept me in on Halloween. It's gone now, but it was enough that all I got done was spending the afternoon passed out on my bed asleep*.

Well, and a drabble. Added a new fandom to 'stuff I have written' -- yay for drabbles about book fandoms. (Suddenly you see why I took to Yuletide like a duck to water -- writing for odd fandoms is one of my favorite things to do.)

I am not adapting to the early darkness at all. For an astronomer, I sure hate the dark. No, that's not quite true. I like the dark when it comes on after I eat dinner and can sip my decaffeinated tea and watch the sunset, then go out and look at the stars. Not so much when I come home from work in the dark, or have to wake up before the sun.

* My normal response to pain is OTC painkillers and sleep until they take effect.

Tomorrow work should be busy -- I got a lunch seminar and a meeting with my advisor on 'where I am going with research**', and a lot of paper-writing and stuff.

** Basically, I'm done with one major project, unsure if I should pursue the other one further or just finish and publish, and suspect that I might need a third project to get enough dissertation writing material, but I'm going to ask my advisor. Also mention something someone mentioned to me at DPS about something I brushed over in my talk, and maybe calculating a lower limit on something. (Except I don't know -- or am not sure -- how. Maybe that, plus the F-ring feature thing that I'm helping Matt with, but is low on his priority list, would be enough stuff -- 'cept the F-ring stuff is Matt's project, and I'm just giving him the data from my data set to add to the data he has.)
1st-Nov-2009 05:06 pm - halloween tea

My parents and I went to a literary high tea with a Halloween theme yesterday. 

 

It was held at a church in Jordanville, a small town about 45 minutes from our home.  It started off with tea and a course of all different kinds of little sandwiches, and then a story was read a loud.  After that there was more tea and a course of scones.  This was followed by two more stories and finally a dessert course. 

 

The first story read was “The Most Haunted House” from Spooks of the Valley edited by Louis C. Jones, a legendary folklorist in our area who put together several books of local ghost stories he collected.  The second story was Shirley Jackson’s always chilling “The Lottery” and the final story was Roald Dahl’s darkly humorous “Lamb to the Slaughter”. 

 

I admit I was a little disappointed that only the first story dealt with supernatural horror but still, it was quite an enjoyable and unusual way to celebrate one of my favorite holidays.  Being me I didn’t eat anything but it was interesting to see all the different things that were served and I got some ideas for things to make for the book release party my mother holding later this month. 

1st-Nov-2009 02:21 pm - This was awesome enough to be screencapped.
So I play Vampire Wars over on Facebook, and there's five special limited edition abilities available for Halloween, and all are based on Horror classics. There's Blood-Soaked Vengeance (Carrie), Hierophant Transformation (Pinhead), Bile Spew (The Exorcist), Hyde's Rage (Jeckyll and Hyde), and Clown Frenzy (IT)

In order:


[info]yuuo and I together recognized all of these off the bat except for Bile Spew, so I went googling. Since I knew all the others were based on horror movies or novels-turned-movie, it was likely that this was a horror movie reference. I had nothing else to start with but that and the name of the ability.

So I googled.

The first result made me blink, stare, then begin laughing hysterically.

1st-Nov-2009 01:47 pm - some interesting links

I’ve deeply drawn to the films of Lars Von Tier. There’s something about his worldview that validates the pessimism about human nature that I feel as a chronic depressive. Stephan Rylance’s review of Von Tier’s lastest movie, AntiChrist, really clarified this aspect of Von Tier’s work for me.

The Agonies of an Antichrist by Stephan Rylance

On the liter side is “Truly, Truly Outragous”, an article on Samantha Newark who was the speaking voice of Jem (Britta Phillips was her singing voice) on the 1980’s cartoon series Jem and the Holograms. Jem was a great show and the interview addresses it’s gay appeal and even mentions fan fiction.

Truly, Truly Outrageous by Noah Michelson

During August and September when I was still working at the supermarket I developed a daily after work ritual—I’d put on the soundtrack to Inglourios Basterds and polish off an entire bottle of wine while playing Farmville on Facebook. It’s only been a little more than a month but I already feel a combination of horror and deep nostalgia for that time in my life. The soundtrack however I have only enthusiasm for. It was recently posted on The American Nightmare, a music blog I sometimes follow and I would strongly recommend it.

Inglorious Basterds Soundtrack at The American Nightmare


1st-Nov-2009 11:15 am - My Brain is a Strange Place
As in, it thinks doing a Kino's Journey/Slayers fusion fic would be a good idea. Or even a crossover type dealie taking Kino, Hermes and the feeling of Kino's Journey* and bringing it into other settings. Just as kind of a series of one-shot crossovers to play with settings/characters of various series and to write Kino and Hermes.

* If you like thoughtful anime, I recommend this series highly. Basically, the premise is that Kino is a traveler who only stays a few days in each town she visits and Hermes is her motorrad (think motorcycle with AI). A lot of the episodes are stand alones or two-part arcs, and they're very concept oriented. For example, the first episode, Kino visits a town where the inhabitants developed an ability to read each other's minds. As time passed, they discovered that knowing the innermost thoughts of even loved ones was making it impossible to live with them, so they all isolated themselves and used robots to do everything. The one person Kino meets tells her this, then invites her to stay, since she's the first person he's talked to in a while and he wants to live with people who he can't read. It's a very matter-of-fact anime, showing great beauty and kindness, but also great suffering, irrationality, and brutality. (Oh, the ending...) "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is."

I really liked it, because it was... I guess because it wasn't depressing for the sake of angst, but because it was matter of fact, showing the world which was. It's on my list with Haibane Renmei and Mushishi for cerebral anime that I liked from club and want on my shelf.
1st-Nov-2009 02:19 am - Nanowrimo is here
Sorry about my lack of both comments and posts, I've been busy trying to get things done so that I can nano. ^_^ Expect a lot of comments tomorrow as I catch up on posts... and perhaps some last minute fanfics as I finish those up tonight.



2164 / 50000 words. 4% done!

One of my villains is already creeping me out... she's just found out that the child she's just given birth to has magic and she's plotting out how to kill it... perhaps I shouldn't have read a few of Edgar Allen Poe's short stories today. I'm creeped out by my own writing... And this is only the minor villain, the main one is even creepier but he doesn't show up until I'm done with department of backstory.

Later on today I'll post a link with a brief summary of my work if anyone is curious. I've just got to figure out how to sum up the story without giving to much away. ^_^

Now however I have to finish a few fandom obligations while the energy drink is still pulsing through my veins. :-)
31st-Oct-2009 11:56 pm - Doctor Who fic: Taking Over Me (10/Rose)
Title: Taking Over Me
Fandom(s): Doctor Who
Pairing(s): 10/Rose
Rating: PG-13ish (One curse word)
Disclaimer: If I owned it there would be more happy Doctor and less emo Doctor. (I want him happy damn it)
Warning(s): Mild angst and then a lot of sap. (AKA: Dani's usual style.)
Summary: She was horrified. It was wasn't her. She wasn't saying that or thinking that. She loved listening to his babble. Loved watching his eyes light up and seeing him smile as he acted like an over eager puppy ready to impress her with his brilliance. He looked so hurt, like she'd just taken a rolled up newspaper and whacked him on the nose while telling him that he was a bad boy.

Notes: written for Spookathon Prompt cursed object or jewelry
Beta: Thank you Ian
Word-count:1,908


Taking Over Me )
31st-Oct-2009 11:20 pm - Doctor Who fic: Major Arcana (10/Rose)
Title: Major Arcana
Fandom(s): Doctor Who
Pairing(s): 10/Rose
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: If I owned it there would be more happy Doctor and less emo Doctor. (I want him happy damn it)
Warning(s): Mild angst and then a lot of sap. (AKA: Dani's usual style.) Post Girl in the Fireplace)
Summary: Rose lay on the ground, pale, still as-
Notes: written for Spookathon Prompt #45 - Tarot
Beta: Thank you Ian
Word-count: 2,207

Major Arcana )
31st-Oct-2009 04:37 pm - Awesomeness
So I passed the math portion of the teacher's test. I don't know about the English junk yet as it's a new test and they hold on to it forever, but hey the math part is good and that was the part I was worried about. Go me!
31st-Oct-2009 09:58 am - Put this on the list of things I Do. Not. Get.
My brother is a terrible writer, as I think I mentioned last week. It's not that he can't write, but he needs some one on one focus and some very specific but simple training. All of that is ok. He and I are working on it and I really think he could be in gear for the limited writing he'll do in college with an engineering major.

I suppose I should say that he and I were working on it. My mom took over, partly because Kyle wasn't smart enough to plan so that I could really look at the work and partly because she doesn't like when others are in control of what's hers .

He has rolling admissions and someone needs to push him through this. He couldn't or wouldn't do it on his own. She might have just felt like she had some momentum left after Kyle needed her to look at the common app and pushed through. I don't really know.

What I do know is that she stopped being "helpful" to the cause yesterday. She's fine at correcting but she doesn't get the kind of one on one detail work that needs to be done. She doesn't get that because you can correct it all in one draft doesn't mean you should (not if you want Kyle to pull something from the mess anyway). She doesn't get that oral correction is like you never did anything. She doesn't get that even written corrections just don't get translated over to the paper because Kyle can't copy word for word and he's so unsure about his work and his own instincts he won't correct stuff in the essay that doesn't make sense to him because he knows that's part of what you wrote down so the not making sense bit is all in his head.

Basically she doesn't get that beyond coaching Kyle in writing and compensating for some of his learning disabilities, I'm coaching him in confidence and doing my utmost to make sure that he understands, can do what I did, and feels good about where he is and the progress he's making. It isn't easy and I don't lie to him about anything. If it's bad I say so, but the trick is not to belabor that point. I tell him we all come in at different starting points and there's nothing we can do about where we start, we can only do something about where we move to. I always stress that we can move this to A work The piece is going to finish strong. I focus on the improvements from last time how he stopped doing x and that was great or I could tell he understood and really worked to keep tense together. To be honest how he picks up and integrates what he understands is very promising.

Anyway, my mom has been yelling for two days and it's getting more insulting and personal each day. We all know she has her limits and snaps. We all knew she'd already broken down on this issue once and was therefor more likely to go crazy over it a second time.

I don't get it. I don't understand what she thinks she'll accomplish yelling at Kyle telling him he's stupid and he can't do the work and his attempts are pathetic. I don't get how I can sit and explain what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and point to some positive results and she can still come in and shit on it all.

I don't get what Kyle was thinking when he didn't jump on this after the first time she went ape shit crazy. I know how demotivating she can be. I know she can shake you in a lot of cruel and hard ways. You know I get the hesitation and I get that the quality of work is going to be less than it was before because now you're shaky. I don't get not trying to dodge all the abuse and crazy you can.

I don't get the whole deal.
30th-Oct-2009 10:04 pm - Language Peculiarities
In English, a queen can be a Queen Regnant (a monarch), a Queen Consort (the wife of a monarch) or a Queen Mother (the mother to the monarch). But a king is always a King Regnant -- the husband of a monarch is a Prince Consort. I don't think the father to the monarch has a title. Then again, reading Wikipedia indicates a lot of it is because Britain -- who tend to be what sets usage of noble titles in the English language, since most English speaking countries either look to Britain for their nobility needs or don't have nobility -- has only had two reigning queens in the current era. Victoria outlived her husband and Elizabeth II is still alive, so that means that 'widower of previous monarch/father to current monarch' has never needed a word, and apparently Victoria couldn't get Parliament to call her husband king since he wasn't British. (Elizabeth II made her husband, Philip, a prince, but not Prince/King Consort.)

Now, the reason I think about this is for fantasy writing -- or non-English-language fanfic*. I mean, if I have a country that didn't have the tradition of men inheriting first, then the courtesy titles for spouses and parents should be consistent with that. So, either one has to go with Queen/King as only meaning a monarch, and Prince(ss) being a term for 'member of monarch's immediate family or direct descendants, who is not the monarch him/herself' -- so you end up with this being the Prince(ss) Consort, former Prince(ss) Consorts/now Prince(ss) Father/Mother, and the 'normal' children, grandchildren, and siblings to the monarch. Or you could have King/Queen be the term for a spouse/widow(er) of a monarch as well as the monarch him/herself. (This would also extend downward -- so a Duke or Duchess could be ruling a Duchy or the spouse of the ruler of the Duchy.)

Or you can just use the male terms as unisex terms, and use the Consort as a title for a spouse. I know for my tweaks to Green Ronin's Blue Rose setting, I'm changing it to drop King/Queen as the title of Aldis, and just go with Sovereign (the name of the office), with the Consort (or Consorts) being any spouses.

* I specify the language since a lot of politeness and titles and stuff translate better figuratively than literally.
30th-Oct-2009 01:38 am - The Gone Notice
On November 2nd, I'll be gone pretty much all day and won't be in till about eleven in the evening. I'm going to work the polls (like I did in September).

Just so that you guys know! :3
29th-Oct-2009 09:00 am - Halloween Post Because I Can
My mom and I have been talking about this Halloween party we're putting together since September. It's really very sweet that she's trying to share my enthusiasm and general need of this holiday. Its the one Christian holiday that was never ruined by some sort of whatever junk that's tainted all the others. You know all that junk that's covered them which generally result in me having a bunch a panic attacks and nervous break downs and general freak outs as they come closer.

I mean my connection to this one holiday in the most secular of views is probably one of those big subconscious things that tipped the scale in favor of some neo-paganism classic where I can celebrate Halloween as a big party. A culmination of last year and a clean start on the new year. Beyond the party and the food and all that I'm really trying to focus on that last bit. I need a new start. I need to let go of what I'm carrying and reconnect with some of the good energies and things that I used to sense so naturally. I thought that I could do that without a mile marker, but since I can't, I'm hopeful that the little addition will help.

Anyhow, I'm cooking for a party this year. My brother and his little friends are coming over. The food is mostly weight watchers friendly because I really do want to help my mom with her diet. I want to rent out the Rocky Horror, Evil Dead, and Rosemary's Baby. All classic movies Kyle and his young friends have missed that just need to be remedied. I'm not really a Rocky Horror fan, but I don't think my prejudice should stop peeps from seeing it. After all I'm not a Monty Python fan either so what do I know about great cult classics.

Got food shopping and movie renting and class and work all on the horizon. Ta.
28th-Oct-2009 10:19 am - Annoyance
Today is a rainy and gray day. But that's not what I'm here to complain about.

So, last night, I finished my first read-through of papers and went to the fabric store and out to dinner. I get home around 6, and go to my computer.

Rebecca Versus the Computer )

TLDR: Desktop at home is borked. Considering I tried at least a half a dozen time to either restore from backups or reinstall the operating system, with no helpful results, I think my only recourse is to send it to Apple and let them deal with it. (It's two years old, so no longer under warranty, and I don't live near a place that is certified to repair Macs. I could ask at Best Buy, or somewhere, since it's not like I can void the warranty by taking it elsewhere.)

I have the laptop, so I can head home tonight and do something (and get my files off the external drive), but expect me to be slow about everything computer-related in the next couple of days.

* Seriously, the computer is set to backup the disk every hour when I'm at the computer. I even have a program (Time Machine) that remembers the changes I make between backups, and keeps track of it, so I can essentially browse my hard drive as it looked in the past. Reminds me that I should get an external drive for work.
27th-Oct-2009 03:24 pm - Inkheart

I just finished reading Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart.  It was really wonderful.  It’s the story of a twelve year old girl named Meggie whose life with her bookbinder father, Mo, is disrupted when Dustfinger, a charming but untrustworthy figure from her father’s past appears at their house one night with a mysterious warning.  Gradually, Meggie learns that her father has the power to read people and things into and out of books and that nine years before he brought the Dustfinger as well as the villainous Capricorn and his henchman Basta to this world while accidentally banishing his wife into the pages of a book titled Inkheart. 

 

Capricorn, who has established himself as a crime lord, is after Mo hoping to use the bookbinders magical gift for his own gain.  Kindhearted but deserate to return to his own world Dustfinger is sometimes helps, sometimes hinders Meggie and Mo.  Their other allies are Meggie’s great-aunt Elinor, a devoted book collector, Farid a boy Mo reads out of The Arabian Nights, and Fenoglio, the author of Inkheart.

 

While Capricorn and his henchmen are certainly evil-- ruthless brutes who cheerfully commit arson and murder—Funke is not afraid to make her heroes deeply ambiguous.  Dustfinger’s loyalties are always questionable, Farid has a fascination for fire that sometimes make it seem as though he would be more at home among Capricorn’s followers than his enemies, Elinor lives in and for books and has little use for people, Mo keeps secrets from his daughter, Meggie herself is possessive of her father to the point where she isn’t sure that she wants to see her mother returned from the pages of Inkheart and Fenoglio takes an almost megalomaniac pleasure in the face that the characters he created have come to life.  Far from detracting from them, these flaws make the characters seem more human and in the end, even more heroic.

 

Inkheart is an exciting adventure story but it is all about books and the way stories can transform and enrich the world.  Books have great power in the world of Inkheart.  On the most superficial level Meggie, Mo and Elinor all love and value books, both for their content and as physical objects while Capricorn and his men are largely illiterate and actually burn books yet it is not that clean cut.  Books are not without their dangers.  This is illustrated by Elinor’s distain of real people and general disconnect from life as well as by the fact that the villain of the piece, Capricorn, actually comes from a book.  It is not just Mo’s power but Fenoglio’s skill as a writer that allows Capricorn to come to life.  The worlds that books open are far from harmless. 

 

I felt like Funke was very brave in introducing themes that couldn’t be easily resolved.  The easy way is to say “books should never be burned, books can’t harm anyone.”  Funke says “books should never be burned, but books just might have the power to burn you.”

 

There are two more volumes in the Inkworld Trilogy as it’s called, Inkspell and Inkdeath.  I’m looking forward to going to the library and devouring them.


German and English editions of Inkheart

27th-Oct-2009 12:56 pm

Whenever I’m confronted with a situation my first instinct is to curl up and die.  Luckily my second instinct is who get up, figure out what I have to do and do it so I managed to  work things out so I won’t have to go off my medication. 

 

I had enough Abilify (the most expensive of my meds) to last two weeks so ended up refilling my generic Prozac and getting then got two weeks worth of Cymbalta.  It wound up costing about $145.  Hopefully by the time I run out of everything my insurance company will have received and possessed my payment for October and November and I’ll be properly covered.

 

I have to say dealing with health insurance and trying to keep myself in meds is always good for a sleepless night. 

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