I have a job! Granted, I achieved said job through judicious application of the nepotism of certain organisations with connections to certain relatives, but if I said more, I'd have to kill you.

No, really.

But, this job lark is hilarious. It's like a grown-up version of when kids play house or shop or whatever. I play with cash, clothes and razor blades. Okay, razor blades might be a glamorous term for those little safety blades people use to slice up the duct tape on warehouse boxes, but you'd never get me to admit it. I am greatly enjoying my newfound out-of-pocket solvency. I can actually buy my own cocktails now rather than shamelessly using my assets! Which is fun, but I like being able to slap down a crisp note and buy a round for all my friends.

And my boss is awesome. Well, one of my bosses, the one with whom I have the most day-to-day interactions. She's twenty-something, tall, blonde, gorgeous, really nice, and my first impression of her was that she's a girl-next-door type, which is always cool in itself. But! Turns out she's from New Zealand, which is to Australia as Canada is to America, only with added Bob Marley fixation, and she has the most beautiful tattoo of angel-wings running full-length down her back, which I have yet to see in their entirety, but when she lifted her shirt to show me a bit of it, I noticed that she was wearing a hot pink bra. Amazingly, I do not have a crush on her, I just think she's fucking awesome.

-

More seriously, ( Polanski Raped a Child, Hollywood Derails. )

-

Now, I'd like to talk about the happy place that's kept me from going totally off the deep end lately; an incredible little film called ( The Fall, with added pretty to sway the doubters. )

-


-

( Vaguely disorganized meta on Supernatural Season 5 up to the latest ep )

My contribution to spn_summergen:

Palindromes
She became the shivering tremble of a whetting stone across the edge of a blade, the heavy scent of gun oil and long afternoons working on the once-hated Impala.
For the prompt: AU. John dies on the ceiling, and Mary goes after the YED.


Go check out the masterlist, there are some brilliant fics, artwork and vids just waiting to be praised.

( Summergen recs )

Also, belatedly, GIP! Check out the icon speccygeekgrrl made for me, it's my HBIC OTP. ♥

For the maybe two people on my flist into True Blood, a mix! For the rest, a bunch of GQMF music!



A mix for Eric & Pam

( People ask the question... what's a RocknRolla? And I tell 'em - it's not about drums, drugs, and hospital drips, oh no. There's more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life - some the money, some the drugs, other the sex game, the glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he's different. Why? Because a real RocknRolla wants the fucking lot. )


( Notes )

You might have heard about the oh-so-secret (hah!), elaborate scheme I've been cooking up with egregiouslypink, otherwise known as The Motherfucking Mafia AU (Now With 100% More Misha Collins).

( Yeah, so then this fell out of my head. )-

And, better late than never:

Ask me my fannish (tv, movies, books, music) Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post.

Drabbles from the icon meme posted a couple days ago.

-



For bessemerprocess

( The West Wing: Toby. )



For lizzy_someone

( The West Wing: Josh & Sam )



For evercourant

( White House/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy )



For egregiouslypink

( True Blood: Eric/Pam )

And now to work on The Best Fucking AU On The Planet (Now With 100% More Misha Collins), As Dubbed, Instigated, Invented and Co-Written By egregiouslypink. I find this is a working title that tends to grow on one.

( True Blood. Spoilers up to 2.07 )

-
( Leverage 2.01. I make no apologies for the judicious application of capslock. )


Um. Also, because I have an inordinate, entirely shameless amount of love for my icons, a writing meme:

Pick one of my icons here and I'll write you something based on said icon. If you choose a stock/text only icon, feel free to choose the pairing (or character) I write.

spn_summergen fic is locked, stocked and off into the luminiferous aether of cyberspace.

In celebration, have a minispam!

• Steampunk Disney Concept Art.
  
  Go for the steampunk wasteland, stay for the cyborg Goofy.
  
  bessemerprocess? Consider this incentive.



• The new Ferrari 458 Italia
  
  Asdfghjkl. Do want. Guh.



• Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
  
  Interesting article that puts into words the vague kind of frustration I get whenever people organize short little things into the day that totally cramp my writing groove.



• Tom Felton's Self-Declared Not-To-Be-Taken-All-That-Seriously Album
  
  Dear god, what is this strange alien creature who looks like nothing so much as Fanon!Rockstar!Draco?

Pimpage: free_fiction is a little community that I'm helping out with. The basic idea is to keep this a small, word-of-mouth community where people can talk about - and post snippets/full forms of - both fanfiction and original fiction. I think it could be really awesome, even just in terms of getting feedback on WIPs and chatting and bouncing ideas around without having to worry about presenting a fully polished product. Once we get a few members, we're going to start out with a a kind of pimms-and-lemonade-mad-hatter's-tea-party of comment drabbles for WIPs or concept-fics that were fabulous in your head, all those crazy crossovers and original notions that never quite got off the ground and lurk on your hard drive chucking out the odd ninja-bunny, like ill-disguised espionage agents lingering around the duck pound, throwing out the occasional rye-and-raisin, surprisingly nutty breadcrumb.

...Wow, that got away from me.

Join up, watch it, who knows? You might like what you see.

I know I've already asked, but if there is anyone out there on my flist who could beta my spn_summergen fic - now at about 4k - I would be eternally grateful. Even just someone to bounce ideas off would be great, as I've run up against a wall and am as of yet too insecure about it to throw myself upon the mercy of a complete stranger. Help?

-

And now, as promised, the Mafia 'Verse drabble.

.700 words, warnings for foul language and a general lack of moral fibre.

This is the island in question.

( A Conversation taking place somewhere in the Adriatic, which may or may not have significant consequences for the fish population of the surrounding sea, not to mention the life span of the local water taxi smuggling operatives. )

What's that you could say? Oh, just that I've been just a tad more silent than, say, a tomb might be? Well you know what? You'd be utterly wrong; I've been to some great parties in tombs.

In fact, I've been in Croatia. Well, Croatia with about a good dollop of Rome, a couple sprigs of London and a dusting of Bangkok thrown in.

And reading Douglas Adams, as might be immediately apparent to those of you who are acquainted with that most noble of institutions, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

( Rome. )
( Croatia. )
( Books: Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Neil Gaiman, Frank Herbert, Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Adams, A.S. Byatt. )
( London: Arcadia and Wicked )
( Bangkok. )

Housekeeping:

• Is anyone available to beta a Supernatural fic over the next few days? It'll be around 2-3k.



• I was inspired to write a short little Mafia Verse' drabble by one of the places I visited. I dunno though, is anybody actually that interested in the mafia 'verse anymore? Let alone a mafia 'verse drabble?



• Obviously, I've been away and unable to keep up, so if anything's happened that I should know about, drop me a line. What's new? What's crackin'? Apparently HBP sucked hairy elephant balls?

Sorry, I do realize that flooding ye old flist is annoying, but this really is important.

i realize now i do not fear death... i fear my daughter will not be free when i die

- From the Twitter of an Iranian medical student

( My death is irrelevant.Wht is important is that u do not forget my words.We want freedom.i will die 4that )

Here's a collection of quotes about what's going on in Iran that I thought were interesting, or different to what I'd read so far:

--

An anonymous Iranian with the handle “Censored Name” posted something a little bit different on his Facebook page:



- Via Michael Totten

-- --



- TIME.


( A few more under the cut. )
--

ETA: There's an excellent analysis of the situation so far here at ontd_political

What is happening, this, here, right now, this is important. This is of monumental importance. We can't do much, we cannot take the baton-blows, we cannot break the lines of riot police, we cannot march through the streets of Tehran.

What we can do is what we do best; spread information in ways that are fast, efficient, and accessible, in ways that just might help tip the balance.



For a good overview of the situation, plus links to sources of information, I direct you to this post:



by one_hoopy_frood

Wow, it must be exam time. Operation Procrastination is at Defcon One.

-

Leverage:



'cause geek and muscle go together like horse and carriage
The Alec/Eliot comment fic party. You know you want to come and play ...


It's very timely, actually, considering this fascinating meta by facetofcathy on the stastics of the burgeoning Leverage fandom activity, and the surprising lack of Alec Hardison, the One Geek to Rule Us All. (Okay, that last bit was all me.)


My contribution: Snuggling.


Supernatural:

Pimping out a new community:



They too have a comment fic meme going on, the theme of which is 4.22: The Day After.

Eta: I forgot to note that the community is friendslocked. I'll probably repost the drabble soon in my own journal.

This is mine.
(Spoilery, obviously. Set immediately post-finale to the prompt: You-Know-Who is suddenly right there.)


The spn_summergen have gone out, and I'm very happy with mine; I've been hit with an awesome concept, and now all I have to do is pull it off.

If you got my prompts, don't worry about sticking to them exactly, I'm very relaxed, and you can go off on all the tangents you like.

--

Meme:

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post a reply about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc.

So there's this library on my campus, it's a secondary library, far away from the main one, sequestered away in an old corner, and in this library, there's a floor where hardly anybody ever goes. It's full of the most amazing books, in languages I can't begin to recognize, let alone read. I love it. There are, however, some books in English, old, old, old books. Wandering around, as I do sometimes in between study bouts, pulling random books off the shelves, I came across a small, red book that was in tatters, and full of old Irish spells and curses. This is one:


A Charm against Accidents, Fire, Tempests, Water, Knife or Lance.

"Jesus, Savior of men. In Jesus trust, and in Mary trust truly for all grace.
This is the measure of the wounds of Christ upon the Cross, which was brought to Constantinople to the Emperor as a most precious relic, so that no evil enemy might have power over him. And whoever reads it, or hears it, cannot be hurt by fire or tempest, or the knife, or the lance; neither can the devil have power over him, nor will he die an untimely death, but safety from all dangers will be his to the end."


( Thoughts on When the Levee Breaks + Lucifer Rising. )
-- --


Deluge.

Coda to SPN 4.22


( après nous, le déluge. )

So I just finished The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (yes, I'm ridiculously late to the party, stop laughing), and my mind is satisfactorily blown. Rather than attempt to impart my impressions through words, at which I would no doubt fail miserably, I instead choose to use pictures, quotations and music.




Spoilers for the book beneath the cut.

( Dionysis [is] the Master of Illusions, who could make a vine grow out of a ship's plank, and in general enable his votaries to see the world as the world's not. )
.
.
.

( Mix: As Serious As your Life. )

GUYS. YOU GUYS. MISHA COLLINS IS SHIPPING HIMSELF WITH MICHELLE OBAMA.

I...I seriously don't know what to do with that.