1. My parents my Terry Francona yesterday. I was in class, so my day was obviously not as remarkable.

2. I have an 18-20 page paper due on Friday, which I have yet to really start, but I am not panicking. This means one of two things: I have lost my mind or I have lost my fear of failure. Coin toss on that one.

3. I'm on twitter now, so if some random follows you with the lameass name "dizzyred," it is because I couldn't think of anything better to call myself at the time. I don't like it very much and would like to change it, but my imagination has failed me.

4. My parents are at the rain-delay game right now, so I feel like the universe is balancing out their super awesome yesterday with my having been in class.

5. Seriously this class has been so intense, I can't even begin to tell you, but we had our last meeting yesterday. This is good, because it was an insane amount of work, but also unfortunate, because it was fascinating.

6. allthingsholy got me hooked on "The Big Bang Theory," because I needed something to procrastinate with and I like to blame her for these things.

7. When I am done with this paper, I am rewarding myself with the purchase of the following things: Dr. Horrible on DVD, the new Michael Connelly (after I finish the last new Michael Connelly), and a replacement copy of Center Stage, which I could really use right now. I would have enjoyed a shopping spree at AC Moore, but when my wallet was lost and stolen two weeks ago, I lost all my free AC Moore crafty money in my $40 of gift cards. I'm still much angrier about that than the wallet itself. But clearly the solution is to buy things.

I was mid-post of an "I am annoyed" post/rant and decided that is not productive, that is not helpful. I am refusing to irritate and grump myself back into unwellness or inability to do anything but grump. If I have to spend my day holed up watching German movies, at least I can have a good attitude about it.

Though I might require more coffee with actual caffeine in it. Total Starbucks stop on the way home, I think.

I no longer know what's popular or not, but here are my fandom opinions that I usually keep to myself:

1. I want to know who the mother is. But mostly because I want the show to catch up to where it should be and not leave us hanging with stories that aren't explained and make those stories awesome, not just hyped (a la` the goat).
1a. I do not want a watered down Barney with my BrOTP. I like the bits and pieces of smooshable Barney, but I do not want him all smooshable, as then he will not be Barney. He will be Ted.

2. I still watch Grey's Anatomy.
2a. I have held out hope that they'll bring back the Izzie of the first two seasons that I really liked, but that Izzie only exists if she has George with her. I get that Shonda wanted to blow our brains by having George be roadmash but "let's give an actor virtually no screen time this season so that his thirty-second reveal in the finale is the most explosive thing ever" was not the only way to do that, and yeah, we got used to not seeing George, but Izzie needs George (BFF George, not last year's we-had-sex-and-now-I-love-you-George) to be a full character. The lack of George all around is one of the things that made Izzie so annoying to me this year: without George, she has no friends, and with only Alex and Denny, she's not the same character.
2b. I still care enough about these characters, and the show, that the above is something I thought about for more than five seconds after the finale. I think Shonda Rhimes is a great story teller, but I think she puts too much importance on EVENTS rather than character development, and it is the thing that is killing her show. And yet, I watch.

3. On The Closer: I hate Fritz.

4. I love Ned. I love Chuck. Chuck and Ned and their need to talk about their relationship and stuff sorta nauseates me. If you're wondering how I can watch Pushing Daisies at all, then, the answer is Emerson Cod.

5. I loved the Bones finale.



OH WAIT, NO I DIDN'T.

Give me back my show, Hanson.

I have a paper due in about two weeks, so it's entirely convenient for me to start having the fic-writing bug again. Or the writing anything bug, really, but it's starting with fic, and given that I haven't really wanted to write in almost a year, it's a nice change. I've been thinking about what kind of writing I like to do best and what stories I think are my best. One of them is a Firefly truthsome fic that I have very little memory of writing, which is unusual for me. Usually the writing process imprints itself so that I can remember agonizing over everything, but this one is one that's sort of lost in my memory, though I feel like this is probably some of the best writing I've done since I started fanfic. It's called "Winter," and it's here.

I did another Firefly story for a bubble fic--I don't like that one quite as much, but it has some nice stuff in it (that one's here). I like writing those two characters so much. I think their balance of sarcasm and pining is just right for me.

A few months ago I went and made the majority of this journal private--locked it just for me--and started thinking about what I wanted this space to be, if I wanted to continue to use it. And I think for now I'm going to keep talking about fannishy things, but I also need an outlet to talk about writing and what I'm reading, and I feel comfortable here, so I think that's what I'll do.

And not to toot my own horn, but in trying to figure out how I want my style to shape up for the novel in my head, I'm also looking at "Babylon." The intent behind the style there is very specific, and I think it's important for me to continue and practice at what I was trying to do there. I don't think that story's dead, but I spend a lot of time just staring at it and not writing it. I'll keep staring until the spark comes back.

My comp students used to hate how much I'd talk about the writing process, but for me, I think it's important to talk through the process as much as it is to work through it. Talking about writing gets me excited about writing, and that's something I feel has been missing in my life the last year. And I'm always stressed to the max and lately uncontrollably dizzy, so I think I need this outlet. If this bores you and you'd like me to filter it, let me know and I'll create a writing filter.

I'm putting my Torchwood watch-through on pause to start watching Dr. Who from scratch (new, not old). My friend has lent me her series one dvds, and I'm psyched because I've never seen the first few episodes, so I never saw Rose meet the Doctor, and because now I can catch up to where I am with Torchwood. I hit the pause button right in the middle of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," so I can start season two new after I've caught up with Dr. Who. But whenever that might be, I SO need an icon of this:



Absolutely brilliant. I want that as a mural on my wall.

And, amidst planning my 20 pg. paper on pre-WWII German cinema--and by planning, I mean "not having started yet"--I'm dipping my toes back into fic. I have a certain document open on my desktop for when the mood strikes, though today was more about reading fic than writing. I tried to do my homework, but every time I did, I got dizzy. Fic didn't seem to aggravate that. (My sister says I'm suffering Big Papi syndrome.) Anyway, a chapter eight is open and I'm thinking on it hard, but something else is tiptoeing around in my brain that I am too ashamed to even discuss, so I won't, but I won't turn down anything right now that gets me writing again.

Also, I had to take out nine inches of knitting today because I read the pattern wrong, but at least now I can try to fix the gauge thing that was bothering me about this very easy baby sweater.

I'm doing the PD mood theme this week in honor of its ending (sob), but I've loaded another in case I get distracted by something shiny. Or sparkly. Whatever.

Mannequins coming alive is so one of my nightmares. That, and cats eating my feet.

Anyone know of any good (really good, not just sorta good) Alice backstory fic?

Things of note:

1. I am on my second day of what might be an annual thing now, my too-dizzy-to-get-out-of-bed-welcome-summer-awesome-thon-of-FML. Today is better than yesterday, but yesterday I woke up pretty sure I was going to die from being dizzy. I woke up dizzy, which is not that unusual but a less frequent occurrence lately than it used to be. The interesting--and horrifying--part was that I did not just wake up dizzy, I was dizzy before I woke up. I was dizzy in my sleep. In my dreams. That was just so unpleasant I woke up nearly in tears, but I think I'm getting a bit better.

2. I spend more time on lj lately tweaking my icon selection and trying to choose a mood theme than I do writing anything, because that is the ultimate allure of lj. Right now I am trying to decide between the sort-of-started Brennan theme, an animated Pushing Daisies, and an animated Twilight theme. I am ashamed for the last one, but cannot help it.

3. I love Neil Patrick Harris.

4. My niece or nephew is feisty: yesterday my sister said that while her husband was listening to the baby's just-audible heartbeat, the baby kicked him in the head.

5. Torchwood is insane, and I am really enjoying its first season. Everyone makes out with everyone! It's like, moment of tension, moment of tension, MAKE OUT session!

6. I am going to see Star Trek for the third time tonight, because I hate keeping money in the bank.

7. My room is a mess and I have German homework to do.

8. Which I will do after I lay down some more.

I wonder if I am the only graduate student ever to use these two words in the same three-hour class period: "prelapsarian" and "Voldemort."

I am not watching the MTV movie awards instead of reading for my German history course tomorrow. I am definitely not doing that, because I actually have a substantial amount of reading and research to do for this class in the next six weeks, and it would be a misuse of my time to wait through this kind of drivel for exclusive clips of movies based on novels written for people no longer in my age bracket.

And because I have so much time to spend doing things other than school work, by which I mean the opposite, these are the things I have planned for the summer that have nothing to do with the history of the Weimar republic:

1. Finishing the two sweaters already on needles for my nephew/niece arriving in September (we're not sure which brand of baby we're getting); finishing the other sweater on other needles for the honorary nephew coming to the family also in September.

1a. Undertaking a huge embroidery project for said nephew/niece with Peter Rabbit and all the vital information to be filled in after his/her arrival. It is super cute and I don't know if I can pull it off.

2. Watching the first season of Torchwood.

3. Watching the third season of Robin Hood, which I totally forgot about until just now.

4. Rewatching Alias from the beginning. (I did not steal this idea from Allison, as I'd already started before she started. I DID TOO.) See, this is how I normally do a rewatching--and why I'm also starting from the beginning for the second time this month--I put a DVD on, and then I do something that in no way resembles paying attention. It's like listening to music when you're working; it's on, but you've heard it before, and you may sing along a little bit, but your brain is doing something else. I'm also trying to add a lot more fiction and non-academic reading to my diet, because the truth is I have no drive to write right now and I need other people's stories to feed me for a while. I miss writing every day, but that's not enough to get me to do it, to be honest. I hope getting lost in some other stories will help motivate me, get things rattling around again. Or, you know, I just really like watching Sydney running really fast in silly wigs and trying to figure out exactly what was up with Will's hair that first year, and I like having new shit to read on the T. Whatever.

5. Commenting right now on the fact that Kristen Stewart could rise above her own disgust for the entire business in which she willingly works and attempt to fake a display of enthusiasm to promote shit. I understand it is exhausting to be young and beautiful and live in a world where people make a commodity of that, but, you know, enunciate and look up and comb your hair and shit. Also, I am apparently getting wicked old.

6. Making more biscotti. I made some freaking awesome italian cookies last night.

That is all, until I find something else shiny to distract me.

I'm pissed at you, Thomas and Bays. Your lack of follow through annoys me. And damn you for making me watch this a SECOND time to figure out what actually happened with the BROTP.

Le sigh. Season finales this year are messing with my mind.

1. I keep popping on and off the internet as a person who writes things down here. It's just an accidental side effect of losing my mind. So if you have good life things happening and I've not commented, I love you and I'm happy for you, and if the opposite is true, I am thinking about you and saying some prayers, which I am not just saying, but I should caution you is perhaps theologically unsound, as I am lately working out what God and I might have to do with each other. I'm bouncing for the 6PM service yesterday for my job, and I'm saying a prayer when I get a minute between encouraging tourists to come in but discouraging them from taking pictures, and I look up at that gorgeous ceiling, talking to Jesus in my head, and I literally think, "I know, dude, but bear with me here."

2. I want to write more than anything in the world, but I have so much work and tutoring and school work and this paper that is so hard to write that I don't want to write that I am weeks behind on, but there's fanfic happening in my head and fake-research for my fake-novel going on that I'm fake-writing, but until this one paper is done nothing else can be done, and it is seriously the worst thing I could have done to myself to pick this topic, and it is probably one of the reasons I've had to double my dosage of anti-crazies, but not the only one (see: SO MUCH TO DO ALL THE TIME, and also: I'M ILL-EQUIPPED).

3. What is dreamwidth, who's doing it, should I give it a whirl, can I bring my batches of icons, and why do I keep imagining I'll ever be able to update anything else ever again when I am clearly having a nervous breakdown that I can't even accurately document on ONE site?

4. I wish I were one of those people who could be a machine and do nothing but school work all the time every day of the week, but one of the reasons I freak out about having so much to do is that I am not that kind of person, I need breaks, I need distractions, and I watch TV. But sometimes I don't watch things because I want to save them, because if I watch them then I won't have them new to watch, only as something I've seen that I'll watch again. (Like how I can't read the last book of an author still publishing until the next one comes out because then I have nothing new by them and have to wait until the next book, and I hate the idea of being without that one new thing to read.) This is why I've yet to watch the season finale of FNL--BUT NOT THE SERIES FINALE BABY WOO--and some Masterpiece classic stuff. But I have been watching Castle, because of how I love Nathan Fillion and would like to have babies with him, which has led to me re-watching Firefly, which is reminding me how much I love Mal, and how much I love Mal's relationships with his various crew, and how much I love shipping Mal/Inara, and how I would like to read fanfic about them, but not, because then I would be afraid to steal, and how I thought I didn't have anything else to write about them after two whole stories, and maybe I don't, but it would be fun to try, but probably not any time soon because of how I can't write anything at all right now. And OH MY GOD is it a bad idea to have this show on in the background when you're trying to do something else because then the something else suddenly becomes, like, half-assed and dumb because I'm really watching TV and not doing the other thing. The "on in the background" thing only works for very certain things, like Center Stage, which is lost and gone forever to me, and maybe that's really the root of my nervous breakdown, I don't know. Anyway: icon, because I love Mal. And I love Nathan Fillion enough to find that cheesy new show of his endearing.

What am I on, 6? 5. Okay, 5. Also, I love Bones. There were a few episodes that were touch and go for me on why Brennan was being so weird, but last week was SO good. Also, 30 Rock. Also, they're going to cancel Life because of Jay Leno, I'm sure of it, and I will be sad about that, because I love that show even when I can't keep a single thread of the original mystery straight in my head.

6. I need to get up and make some dinner and then keep thinking about maps for this paper. WHY MAPS, you guys, seriously.

7. Yes, this is how fast my brain has been going constantly lately. That's probably the actual reason for the higher dosage. And also the tranquilizers.

8. Ask me a question so I can come back tomorrow. Or maybe I should do the icon meme again. I don't want to go back to the maps, you guys. They make me so anxious. MAPS.

9. I need a new mood theme. I was going to make my own, but see: above, how I am already that crazy. More than that, I need food.

10. So, for real, WHY is the Boston Athletic Association's logo a unicorn? Other than to make me steal my dad's finishing medals when I was a little kid, because they were fancy, and to drive me silly with curiosity, that is.

So, chief among my procrastination methods at the moment are Snood (terrible time waster, potentially damaging to computers, etc), trolling for new musicals to obsess over, and having HIMYM "on in the background" while I do work. And I still love this show, top to bottom. (Allison, this was a good call on your part, as usual.)

And, you know, I live with a pregnant lady right now, so I've witnessed the growth of a belly with my own two eyes, and I know there's no good way to hide it because, you know, the belly is just, like an ever-present entity with its own metaphorical-gravitational force that MAKES you look at it, but seriously. These guys aren't even TRYING to hide Cobie Smulder's baby belly this year. Doing the jokey thing with Alyson Hannigan's pregnancy was one thing--I get annoyed when shows get precious with their own in-jokes, but, you know, there really is a finite amount of stuff to hide a growing belly behind--but it's an entirely other thing not even to bother filming above the waist or whatever. I think it would have made me less eye-rolly and ich-y about it this week if a) I weren't DERANGED by lack of sleep/too much sleep/lack of sleep yo yoing in my sleep cycle that's making me invent words because I can't think of the real words; b) Lily had been around to make it less noticeable by being also pregnant; and c) it didn't make me wonder how they're going to pull of a Barney/Robin resolution as awesome as the characters are and as awesome as NPH is. Not that you can't do it around a pregnant belly, but it's a TV show where the character isn't pregnant and doesn't want kids and the total lack of effort to hide the real life stuff is occasionally distracting.

It's really all the pregnancy around me that's making me this way. I don't know if you know this, but there are pregnant women EVERYWHERE. One in my house, at least two others that are close friends of the family, on campus, in the city, on the T, on my blogs, on my TV. I feel like I'm going to have a magic immaculately conceived baby just from seeing them all, everywhere, all the time.

Maybe tomorrow, if I remember that I have an lj and decide writing papers is not hte way forward for my life, I'll tell you about my raging insomnia. It's super fun and awesome woo.

Does anyone else watch Life on Mars?

If you heard someone cursing but couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from about a half hour ago, that was me.

Because WHAT?

I mean, seriously: WHAT?

I just don't know, you guys. I DO NOT KNOW. I cannot form an opinion about this in anyway whatsoever right now.

Damn stupid network cancellations.

At least the FNL finale this week isn't a dead end finale.

Look at me, all thinking about TV again. Clearly, I'm not working hard enough.

This is how you get your parents to take you to a Broadway show, when you are from New Hampshire and things like that are very far away and very hard to do.

First, you pay for your own ticket. Then, you tell your mother that she can invite her youngest brother, who she dotes on, and who lives in Connecticut and will let you stay at his house. You leave on a Friday at the end of spring break, drive to near-Hartford-ish (to discover they've totally torn down the drive in and replaced it with luxury condos that aren't selling), and spend the evening talking about your uncle's ridiculously huge new flat screen. (Whatever you are imagining, double the size. It's a mind-boggling television.)

You get up early the next morning, eat a muffin, and drive forty-five minutes to the train station, five people packed into your uncle's car, after which it's another hour or so on the train; you might curse yourself for bringing a novel too big to fit into your purse, which leaves you having to make conversation with your mom over your dad's head, to his endless enjoyment.

In Grand Central, you meet up with your posh younger cousin, who is cool enough that when you ask which stair was that one from Gossip Girl in the pilot, not only shows you, but totally giggles in conspiratorial glee. You walk around, namely to Rockefeller, and then spend twenty minutes in the NBC store explaining to your mom why it's funny that you want a Dunder Mifflin travel mug, and that yes, they do print "that's what she said" on a baby onesie. There are no thimbles, which you find disappointing.

You have lunch near Broadway, at a diner almost directly under the Mamma Mia! marquee, which your mother will stare at forever. It's a diner where people sing as they serve, which is a little scary and makes you think far too long about what their lives must be like and where they might live, only in part as a way to distract yourself from how disappointing your chicken tenders are. You say goodbye to your posh cousin and make for the theater, but only after making an exhaustive investigation of whether or not your aunt will allow you enough time to get those huge cupcakes they were just talking about. (She will not.)

You go through lines to get to lines until you finally get into the theater, under the famous sign, and point out to your mom that all the principles will be in that afternoon's show. You sit high up, under an air vent, but the stage is cool and things light up and you have enough time to remind your mother where she's seen that actor, and that one, but she's mistaking that guy for someone else.

It's a whiz-techie production in some ways, less in others, and they've taken the story back twenty years, but the songs are the songs you love, even if the rhythms of "Fugue for Tinhorns" are all different. In fact, you sort of love this new patter. Miss Sarah is wonderful; Nicely and Benny are excellent; (your favorite TV actor) Adelaide is much funnier than you thought she'd be, and much funnier than Nathan, who's the only slight disappointment; Nathan feels like he's not all there, but maybe he's supposed to be that distracted; Havana is a cool spectacle; but the Save a Soul General wins at everything, and she's the reason fandom came up with expressions like "made of awesome." Even though you've been listening to this show on regular rotation since you were literally twelve years old, seeing it fills in gaps and makes the story whole and the ending looks different than you thought it would. And even if more sophisticated theater buffs or critics think it's just okay, it's your first time seeing a Broadway musical in New York, with an original(-to-the-production) cast, and it's pretty damn awesome and memorable. When your mom lets go of your arm long enough to clap and shout that she didn't want it to ever end, you know even more exactly where you get it from, and that's a nice feeling.

Also, you take cliche pictures, because you are a dork. (And then point out that the larger sizes of the city shots are nicer in flickr.) For example:



Zamboni!



This is my dad. And also, his invisible parasite. This is three times more miserable than he generally looks with a camera stuck in his face, because he has an actual parasite. It is not hidden in his mustache.



Another cliche!



This time with my dad walking through it!



Look, a traffic light in a cliche!



Dad, and Uncle Jim. Neither they are nor their mustaches are related, except by marriage.



My mom and my chins.



My impossibly posh cousin Hannah and I.



The marquee.



The marquee, which does not allow trucks to park near it.



I didn't get the other side of the stage, but it said BURLESK.



Less self-consciously: it was super fun, and I was dazzled enough by the whole spectacle to love everyone and everything they did.

I have this thing with broadwaysecrets where every week there's at least one secret/comment that makes me throw up my hands in disgust--they have not impressed me with their subtlety or discretion, some of these people, is what I'm saying. This week, some lovely soul cheered for the Jane Krakowski-replace-Lauren-Graham-now-plz secret with a hell yeah, Lauren Graham sounds like a cat dying of AIDS. Now, that's not kind.

Likewise, it would probably be unkind of me to say that this comment is, to me, like the kind of secret someone posted about how Alison Janney "can't sing", because some people want all their performers to sound the same. But I'll say it, because I've already called someone obnoxious and mimed jamming a pencil in my ear during another student's answer in class today, so I'm prolly going to hell no matter what. (In my defense, I'm very unstable right now.)

Which is a long way of saying, if I get my reading done tomorrow, I'll have pics from my New York trip and comments about the show we saw and the weird diner we went to and such. But I rather liked Lauren Graham in this show.

I think facebook broke me for LJ. Because now it's like, I can let you know how I am in one sentence, and if you want more than that, or expect to hold my attention for more than that, well, you expectations vastly exceed reality. So there's that.

But I'm on (see above) spring break this week, and I have all these plans, you see. Things like reading and writing (OH THE WRITING I WILL DO) and taking walks with my camera and cleaning my room and everything I've put off for the past month and a half. Clearly, this can all be accomplished in a week, and I will not at all fall behind on accomplishing any of it by, say, Wednesday.

So I'll keep you posted on that.

I talked to Allison forever tonight about TV, as you do, and then instead of going to sleep like I should have, I went to Wikipedia to look at the discussion page for the Twilight series. As you do. Because, I don't know if you know this, but Wikipedia discussion pages can be hilarious. And while this one is not as good as the IMDB goofs page for the movie and its litany of "incorrectly regarded as goofs" (because no one took into account that vampires can do things that people simply can't do, as here documented on film), it's a good read. And reading it, I fell in love a little bit again with fandom. I miss watching that one show every week that you just hang in for, that you then must dissect and discuss, and then dissect and discuss the opinions of others, and think about how right you are, and feel genuinely engaged with a community because of how crazy it can be, because while people have heated opinions in real life, rarely will you ever have a quotidian conversation so spirited that all involved believe that the world is really ABOUT TO EXPLODE BECAUSE OF THAT ONE THING.

Twilight isn't that for me, because it's so big and I came to it so late and I can't muster quite that much enthusiasm for the exploding of the world. Right now, there are a lot of shows I really enjoy and even love, but none apocalyptically. Maybe I just don't have the time right now, or maybe it's a one show deal every decade, or something. But that's neither here nor there, or anywhere, I just digressed myself into nostalgia for the heady post-season-four days of trying to figure out if it was weird to be so cheesed at people online for calling Rory Gilmore a whore. And thinking about the symbolism of, like, doorways.

So here's the thing that I wanted to share with you, on the Twilight discussion page. It's just brilliance, without caps:

"I have a question about the ages in the Character pages. For the immortal characters, should we be referring to their ages as 'physical' ages? Wouldn't it be better to do their ages by when they first came into existence (ie human birth). Putting their physical ages is inaccurate because (particularly for the Cullen family) their ages change. So Carlisle can be anywhere between 20-35 at times. Edward is listed as 17 although by the end of Breaking Dawn he's supposed to be around 19.

The other possible way to do it would be to state it (where appropriate) as 'Age at death'? Canez (talk) 23:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


this has nothing to do with this, but their should be a section on how thebooks are better than the films {well better than he one filmhas been made} does noone else think the twilight film was incredibly diassapointing after the book?? for one thing bella in the book is quirky happy and different but in the film she is lifeless boring the whole book revolves around bellas quirkiness without it it was boring and begs the question in our mind why would edward want to fallinlove with bella? the books also revolve around the love for the two obviously , part of us girls loving twilight so much is due to intense romance but in the film that romance is lost they meet they fall inlove - so what? in the book it devolopes the tension andlove between the two. However the film has one upper hand against the boook -shallow as it may sound- in the book you dont get to see robert patersons gorgous face :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chikkabum (talk • contribs) 15:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)"

First, I appreciate the original poster's concern for accuracy, which is something a true member of fandom would really get into: the nuance between what you know as a devotee of the material in question and what you'd tell the layperson so s/he can really understand it. (The "well, it's not really like that, it's like this," conversation I've had sooo many times about random TV stuff, like how there's a difference between God appearing to Joan and Joan seeing God, which is obvi what made the show so brilliant in the first place.) Because these are the things that would be important for someone to understand if they wanted to really get what makes it so awesome to you. No one ever said Angel was anything other than 240+ years old, because that was what was important at first, not that he was frozen in time, but that he was two and a half centuries older than Buffy and he would never be 17, but with Edward, the deal is that he's always 17. And in fandom, shit like that is important.

But it's the second one that I really love, because it's such a pure expression of fandom in all its weirdness--how when you watch a show that started really excellent and then all anyone does is talk about how great it was that first season and nothing ever measured up after that because they did it all wrong and didn't keep what was so great about it and blah blah. Because when you make that kind of comment, what you're really telling people is what you like best about the show and what means the most to you, which tells people a tiny bit about who you are. And the girl who wrote that comment? She sees Bella and she sees, like, the TRUTH about who Bella IS, and she and Bella are the SAME. And that is why we love stupid things unreasonably, because we want that part of the story for ourselves. It's a little incoherent and sloppy and totally dorky (the sentiment and the writing of the comment), but it is that vicarious thing that makes tv and books and movies that much more compelling. It has your guts. And while I don't find Bella to be any of those things the poster described her as, I still want to put my fist in the air and tell her, I am so with you. I get it.

So on my old laptop, which can now function successfully as a doorstop, lapdesk, paperweight, coaster, or found art, rather than a computer, has some icons on it that I never moved. In addition to the approximately nine million that I have on this computer, as well as the untold number that I've downloaded and discarded. But I was thinking about something the other day, and it reminded me of that moment in "We've Got Us A Pippi Virgin" where Lorelai and Rory freak over the prospect of seeing Pippi again--you know, where they start shouting, "Pippi! Annika as Pippi!"--and remembered I had an icon of the two of them shouting and gleeful. Only I can't find it anywhere. I've trolled icon communities, some of y'all's icons in your profiles, and there's really only so much time I can avoid my reading before I start to lose patience with the internet. Anyone have an icon of that scene? Or a screencap, that I might have one made? Or perhaps a cudgel, because since I'm clearly not using my brains, they might as well be scrambled by blunt force trauma anyway?

And also, the Grammys are weird.

Regarding last night's How I Met Your Mother:
Regarding last night's The Closer:
Regarding the three audio books I took out of the library:
Regarding this posting format:

What I lack in ambition I make up for with an incredible lack of follow through.

I have, literally, over three hundred and fifty userpics stored on my computer because I am a) compulsive, b) indecisive, and c) a pack rat. And I still cannot find one that adequately expresses how I feel after having seen the end of tonight's Grey's Anatomy. Because I have had decompression surgery myself, albeit not for a life threatening condition, but I am still so wigged I'm going to have the shudders for, like, days.

If you haven't seen it (because why would you still be watching this show at this point in its lifecycle, outside the morbid curiosity I have), ( I'll hide it behind a cut in case someone else has morbid curiosity but hasn't watched it yet )

So you can see how I'm a little unnerved right now.