Okay, so something happened to my saved draft? And now I have to go find alllll those photos alllllll over again.

Headpig is not happy about this situation.


So yeah, post is STILLLL upcoming. In the meantime have a macro wot I made.



PS that first one is doing the six degrees of internet separation rounds - look, Mary Borsellino linked it! :D I almost feel internet famous :P

Oh my god has it seriously been a month since I updated properly? FAIL, maggie, FAIL. In reparations (and also in honour of the upcoming Supanova con) I bring thee a hilarious Star Trek macro gif! (be patient if it loads slowly it is EPIC)

( I'm a doctor, not a cut tag! )

As Supanova promises to be an epic weekend of geekery and vodka I figured I should sum up the past er um month (*hides*) now or never, so here goes ( Stuff Wot I Have Done (In Vaguely Chronological Order) )

And that, more or less is that! I leave you with an awesome video! Barring drunk-posts from le_culdesac's house, where I am staying for the duration of the con because fucked if I'm catching a bus AND a train every day at seven in the morning, this will probably be the last you hear of me till Monday or Tuesday. I must try to post at apathy_games tonight, and also this thing called Fictioncrush that some Whitechapel folks have been working on, and also prepare cosplay clothes to bring with me tomorrow. Ooh, and I should post that macro to ontd_st! *bustles*

Augh. Okay, that essay is done and dusted. God, I feel so much lighter now! Only the short story revision left for Thursday, that doesn't inspire quite so much gut-wrenching terror.

So I totally owe you guys a massive post about the last two and a half weeks, a poem and a shitload of links, but it's late so I'll just throw in some of the latter:

Everybody and their mother must have seen the Total Eclipse of the Heart Literal Video by now but just in case anybody hasn't, do so - it is pure gold. Literal tears of lol, seriously.

astridthemighty linked me to this piece of Star Trek related lulz (feel free to skip through the first bit, Letterman is not that interesting). SET PHASERS TO FABULOUS. I want to make that my new journal subtitle :D

I've been neglecting b3ta but the latest question of the week is full of win.

Also via b3ta, an epistolary tale of animal husbandry.

Hahaha you guys.



ALTERNATELY:

Yup, I totally made an Urban Dictionary entry for Captain Oblivious. XD

Aaaand I'm still procrastinating. *sweats*

My problem is that I can actually write when I am not crippled by the paralyzing terror that I cannot write and shouldn't even bother trying. Paradox! I'm starting to realise my capacity for self-assessment is really severely affected by deadlines - I just got back my last three rush-jobs, all for Advertising. I was aiming to pass, as I always do when i leave things to the last minute, and was relatively confident that I had done so but still sweating a little. And. Credit credit high distinction. So, what!? I cannot judge my work with any degree of accuracy here. So this one should be fine! If I can just force myself to sit down and fucking type, omg.

In unrelated news does anybody else really want an icon of the third panel in today's GWS? Her faaaace!

All right back to work!

PS this makes me ridiculously happy. Also kind of freaked out, as I told twitter, because a) I found out like an hour after posting a comment to stele3's journal admitting I totally shipped it, and b) at some point during the past year I told someone, I don't remember who, that my self-image on good days sort of resembles Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman's freaky time-travelling test-tube-baby lovechild. And uh, I guess the test tubes are no longer necessary? But now I feel really squicky because it's moved from the realm of obscure mary sue fantasy to the realm of that-person-could-theoretically-eventually-exist and aaaaugh /o\

meme! because I feel guilty for writing the long post you guys are due when this essay is waiting for me. But rest assured, this weekend I am going to spam the fuck out of you.



Go to urbandictionary.com and type in your answer to each question in the search box, then write the most amusing definition it gives you.


( lulz below the cut )

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

(but still wanting whatever feedback whether anon or otherwise on the last exercise)

actual post imminent! no, more like upcoming lol.

Homework Exercise
Wordcount: 500
Notes: Constructive feedback is really appreciated for this one. I plan to add to it for my final piece in Intro To Short Fiction, and I need to especially know what confused you, what information you wanted and didn't get before and after. This was written in response to a homework task which basically amounted to "write song-fic." I'm serious. If you're curious the song I picked is Hang em High. Also, wrote it in about an hour the night before it was due :/

( so get your gun and meet me by the )

Title: Jack and the Magic Mushroom
Fandom: Fairytales
Wordcount: 834
Notes: Exercise for writing class, rework a fairytale, yawn. This isn't the one I'm going to turn into my final piece, this is just for the lulz.
 

( Jack and the Giant Mushroom )

 

Of new comms I've found here on dreamwidth I'm really liking audiphilia, the song-sharing community. I just posted some songs there for Happy Week. Last week's theme was covers.

I've been reading Star Trek reboot fic and it's making me want to watch the movie again. Mostly because Spock is such a woobiiiiie. I just want Kirk to handcuff him to something and hug him for about six hours straight. I don't even care whether they have sex afterwards! (okay that is a lie)

Okay, NOW I'm posting the writing exercises :P

I really need to update my profile. I used to keep a list of other places I hung out, like Deviantart and stuff, but these days I spend less time on devart and more on b3ta and WhiteChapel...

Speaking of Whitechapel I caught the chatroom with actual people in it for once, it was hilarious. Conversation ranged from Rule 34 to a lengthy discussion of the ethics and naming conventions of robotfucking to a poll on the relative pantslessness of the room, with asides on Brucher's insanity, the resident history nerd's stable of fuck-buddies and Stormtrooper pinups.


I love these guys, seriously. (Labyrinthine = me, btw)

In other news my Writer's Society zine is coming along nicely - zine launch at Lofty Words this wednesday, for sydney folk. Didn't manage to get that swan comic into it on account of it not being finished, but next time! I'm also probably performing at Lofty Words if I can get a couple poems together in time, and singing one song with Alex T. We've been jamming together a bit - both times were meant to involve Lily and this drummer Alex knows, but both of them flaked, citing exams and sudden discovery that drum kit does not fit into car respectively. I am beginning to think I need to be keeping a list.

Obstacle to starting a band #1: Finding a bloody rhythm section.
Obstacle to starting a band #2: Getting everybody in the same place at the same time.

Massive coordination fail.

I should really be getting started on all the assignments due in two/three weeks. I am the master of procrastination. The only productive thing I did yesterday was to transfer all the files from my old hard drive to my new one and make a start on defragging all the folders. Also smuu posted an awesome lineart of Delirium and I decided to try my hand at rekindling my photoshop colouring skills. So much nostalgia... I used to colour her Demonology 101 characters for fun in MS Paint when I was fifteen. I've evolved! XD Here is my coloured version. I totally love the hair, but I discovered that I really haven't the faintest clue about shading and highlights, so I left those off. Must find some photoshop tutorials... also I kept feeling like the skin was too pale. Dilemma - in the comics all the endless are papery, but the shape of the face in this drawing looks more Turkish or Lebanese or something. In the end I decided that the iconic bright orange Delirium hair and blue/green eyes looked weird with dark skin, so I kept it pink.

Um, where was I? Oh yes, assignments. I totally failed to post the stuff I wrote in Intro to Short Fiction class exercises and I think I'll do that now, because I think I might use one of them for my final piece and I need the feedback! In-class feedback failed it because it is basically horror and I got stuck in a group with two people who "don't do scifi" for that class, so all their advice was something along the lines of "I like this phrase it is very poetic." What I need to know is does it make sense! Seriously!

Second batch of popcorn was sort of burnt, but at least we got the margarine right! Also, I introduced Stan to the joy of S'lesses. He pronounced them genius.

S'lesses, for those who have forgotten, are made by placing in the microwave a marshmallow on a cracker, heating it till the marshmallow starts to expand and then placing another cracker on top. It is delicious. My stomach complained afterwards about the fatal combination of pizza, popcorn and marshmallow, of course, but sooo worth it.

But I'm A Cheerleader was lolarious. So was the half a season of Scrubs we watched after! Also Stan introduced me to Dragonball Z Abridged on Youtube and I returned the favour in the form of Marvel/DC Happy Hour, so it was a lulzy evening all round. As per usual I am now covered in dog hair. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIM.

What else of interest has happened this week? Jess's birthday drinks were fun. I got there early (by which I mean only fifteen minutes late) and spent some time sitting on a couch waiting for Jess to show up, being stared at by some old people and a moose skull on a plaque. But then everybody arrived and fun was had! Avi showed up in a new matrix-y coat with zippers everybody proclaimed "gaaaay" but I thought were awesome. I had a brief awkward moment with a guy I gave my number at a party once a year or two ago and then proceeded to ignore because of My Issues - I dealt with this by pretending I could not quite remember where we had met, an ever-so-mature strategy which nevertheless allowed both of us to save face and participate in the awkward small-talk of "nobody else I know is here yet, how about that footy then." Later, I challenged Stan to the failiest game of pool in the universe. Seriously, I kept on accidentally setting them up for him, and he kept on missing, and so did I, and by the end Sasha had to step in and pocket Stan's last ball out of frustration. Not that this helped because Stan then spent about ten turns trying to sink the eight-ball while I took shots at my remaining five fricking balls. Astonishingly I managed to slowly, slowly sink all of them, and then sink the eight-ball before Stan could. It was seriously the worst pool game in the history of everything. XD

In nonfaily news I got an essay back! It was the Intro to Short Fiction one I'd procrastinated on to the point of absurdity and handed in two days late and two hundred words short. The teacher opened the class by warning us that they had marked this with Pass as a baseline according to the criteria, so you really had to be better than "satisfactory" to move up a grade and la la la, and was just sinking down in my chair think I passed or maybe I failed omg and then she refused to give them back until the end of class, NICE GOING THERE. But to my surprise I got a credit! Even after marks deducted for lateness! And then she anonymously mentioned something I'd done as an example of What To Do! I was like sweeeeet!

In conclusion, did you know that Stan did not know Spinal Tap was not a real band? UMLAUT. WE NEEDS MOAR.

1. Cinemas hideously overprice theirs.
2. Popping sounds are fun.
3. No, seriously, a medium sized volume of popcorn costs like thirty cents when you buy it in an unpopped state. EXTORTION.
4. Melt the butter (in our case, margarine) BEFORE you drop it into the bowl of popcorn. Failure to do this will result in tiny katamari popcorn-balls glued together with butter. This will be hilarious, but not exactly conducive to even butter-coverage.

Me and Stan are watching But I'm A Cheerleader :D

Big day yesterday! In the morning I acted as my mum's proxy in attending my little brother's primary school mother's day assembly, as she had to work. This involved sitting through a lot of alternately excruciating and hilarious speeches from five year olds whom love their mums because they give them lots of hugs and kisses and always buy them things and do the dishes. My principal task was to take photos and video of my brother (during the bits where there were sappy songs and wavy hand gesturesm not while he was propping up his head looking bored witless by the speeches, for which I sympathised with him). I realised this was going to be less than successful when the kids filed in and sat down en masse, with Timmy up the back. Just as I worked out the zoom function on the video, a teacher came down the front, placed a chair directly in between me and Timmy, and sat in it, for the purpose of conducting the aforementioned handgestures. I nevertheless persevered, shooting Timmy's vague and mostly tardy moves over her shoulder, when the granny in front of me didn't turn her head and obscure my line of sight with her nose. Then I ran out of batteries.

Fortunately I was compensated in tea and scones and vaguely shifty looks from parents trying to decide if I was a scandalously young mother. Then I went off to watch Star Trek with perfectdays (<3) - would you like my thoughts on yaoi? Yes, yes you would.

( Star Trek spoilers )

Then I went to Jess's for her birthday Shabbat Dinner With People Her Parents Don't Hate. There was awkward mouthing of prayers I barely remembered, spicy food, arguments about God, Jason waffling like a privileged asshat about aborigines and Rudd's stimulus package, tea, and Liza showed up late and cured my hiccups. Twice.

Now I am off to her general birthday drinks, but before I go this video is amaaaazing and reminded me of this sciffy story that amber linked me to.

I remembered what I wanted to blog about! It's less exciting than it was at three am when I couldn't remember what it was. See, once upon a time I bought a sandwich at my uni cafeteria, as you do. And that day they were handing out freebies with every purchase: tiny little Go Natural bars. I tried to explain to the cashier that I didn't want one, but he gave it to me anywa, and thereupon it sat in my bag for a couple of weeks. Until StressHell Wednesday, when I dashed out of the house with my USB stick and fifteen minutes left before class started, and had no dinner because I was busy photoshopping solar panels onto a roof.

So I was sitting on the bus, and I calmed down enough to realise I was kinda hungry. And I looked in my bag and saw this leetle Go Natural bar. And I thought, look, alright, it's food. I am hungry. I have no idea what it is, but I will eat it. So I unwrap the thing and take a bite.

It's a rock made out of nuts.

I ate it anyway. As a concession to my sense of pride I made faces while I did so, possibly scaring the other passengers or making them think I was on a diet (or you know, little from column A, little from column B...) but I fucking ate it, and thus did not burst into tears at the print shop or faint in class.

For future reference, there is usually a reason they give things away for free...

Assignment done done done! Yay \o/ I think that was the very best last minute shop job I have ever done. I realised I had not done the print ad with about twenty minutes to go, found a random picture of a house (er... a swiss chalet, but the swiss countryside and the Aussie countryside are SURPRISINGLY SIMILAR, YOU GUYS), deleted the sky, stuck in a gradient in the company colours and slapped my headline in the middle. Also I photoshopped a solar-panel-covered roof onto the swiss chalet. IT LOOKED REALLY GOOD, WTF. Then I dashed around trying to find a print shop that was open that late, lol. I don't know if I've actually described this project here - the ad was part of a massive report in which I evaluated some sustainability-themed ads, picked the worst one, explained why it sucked, and then fixed it complete with creative brief and media plan. Oh, and with a linked online ad (that turned out pretty well too YAY CLONE TOOL *glomps it*) but my point is, IT WAS MASSIVE. The print guy took one look at it and said "We're going to need a bigger stapler." And he got out the industrial sized stapler (which was really cool) and charged me fifty cents extra, but by that point I was just like GET ON WITH IT I NEED TO NOT FAIL THIS PLZKTHNX.

In other news... uh... in... I'm very annoyed, I distinctly remember thinking "I'm going to write a blog post about this and it is going to be awesome" and now I can't remember what "it" was. COUGH UP, BRAIN.

Fine, instead have a really cool short story, a really freaky game and something SLIGHTLY wolverine-spoilery that made me lol here.

My internets continue capped until tomorrow! Oh my gosh I am so tired of this snail's pace, how did we ever get anything done back in the days of dial-up??

I keep getting twitterfollowed by randoms :/ a couple of them are interesting, one is a decent author who's just slightly annoying because of spamming us with links to his stories, and the rest are porn/marketing spammers and a Republican. I'm slightly baffled about that last one, where on earth could he have found me? He didn't say hello. Who the hell does he think I am? All of his posts appear to be "man obama's doing stuff :(" and "who does that olberman guy think he is bagging out teabaggers" and WHYYYY DID YOU ADD ME OH MY GOD.

Hee, I'm busy procrastinating on my assignment and doing some online tutoring, but I just had to post about this adorable student. Obviously can't go into specifics, but they logged on to the English category where I do a lot of proofreading of essays and creative writing, except I couldn't help them because it wasn't official homework, just something their teacher suggested they do in their free time. And they said they just wanted someone to read over it because whenever they show it to their friends they just get "it's fine" and I just started giggling because I felt a sudden kinship with that student. You know how you can recognise Someone Like Me at twenty paces sometimes? That's what this felt like, it was like seeing somebody reading Sandman at the library or writing a poem in a notebook on a bus. And haven't we all had trouble finding a good beta at some point or another?

I wanted to help the kid, but rules say only schoolwork gets proofread, so I told them to look for critique-exchange groups online. I wanted to go "get into fandom, heaps of people will want to be your beta!" but I felt that might be inappropriate :P

Forgot to say, I went to the Queer Collective BBQ on Friday, followed by Wolverine watching with my high school mates. So gratuitous sausage jokes followed by... gratuitous motorcycle jokes. For the practically negative amount of actual dicks in my life it sure contains a hell of a lot of dick jokes. Nonspoilery Wolverine reaction: GAMBIIIIIT. Jackman needs to work on his roar, but not his muscles because EEP. Overall better than X-men, especially the last one *shudder*

Anyway, I started to comment on bexless's entry about moar spoilery aspects of the movie and got all tl;dr - lucky you, y'all get to read it instead, with bonus tl! It goes from the squee-worthy to the interesting meta to the lulz and then one or two problematic bits.

( spoilers back heeeyarrrr )

*facepalm*

...aaand I forgot why I made that post in the first place: I have some dreamwidth invites. Did anyone forget to validate their OpenID?

EDIT: Also, did I forget to add anyone who's there already because you got a journal before I made mine?

I have a haircut! It's pretty cool. But my internet is still capped :( so no pics. Instead, have llamas.

Also I totally have a 1500 word report due on Wednesday. I should be doing it now but I thought I was just hopping on quickly before my relatives arrive for my dad's birthday, except they are... not arriving, and not arriving. I got him a Three Musketeers graphic novel, incidentally. I was in Kings Comics to gett my Free Comic Books Day comic and I was like heeey.

In other news, Sam Starbuck i.e. copperbadge, writer of some of my favourite Heroes fic ever, not to mention a shitload of excellent HP fanfic and Discworld fanfic, and of course the famous Torchwood LOLcat Fic, just self-published Nameless, his first original novel, edited and designed with the help of LJ readers.

Christopher, the only bookseller in the small farm town of Low Ferry, lives an uneventful life -- until one day he encounters a shy newcomer named Lucas, and accidentally sells him the wrong book. What follows is a journey for both men, in vastly different ways, set against the strange, ritualistic, magic backdrop of a midwestern winter.

You can check out more about Nameless at his blog post:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/copperbadge/2756652.html

or buy Nameless from Lulu here:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nameless/6798252

I was one of the followers of his journal who read Nameless one chapter at a time and flooded the poor man with constructive criticism, and it was pretty awesome to watch this thing take shape. If recommendation is insufficient motivation to buy, it's also currently available as a free PDF. I myself intend to buy the book as soon as I a) fix my Paypal account and b) figure out how much it's going to cost me given conversion and postage. Lulu refuses to give me an invoice in AUD. It is annoying.

Aha, i has a grandma! Time for foods, oh my god, I am so hungry!