Between the good and bad, that's where you'll find me, Reaching for Heaven

Aside from picking up an apprieciable number of hours of work thus week, I've also got eighteen hours to look forward to next week, since it is Thanksgiving week. The turkey parade actually started earlier than usual this year: I was bagging turkeys all this week. I'm rather looking forward to it, oddly enough, likely because I've been putting myself somewhat in debt buying DvDs at Blockbuster Video. Picked up a stack of random single movies yesterday, including "Groundhog Day" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas". And I'm on my way out to get as many sets of "LOST" as they've got.

I've also been marathon-watching episodes of the 2005 series of "Doctor Who" (particularly the Tenth Doctor episodes -- David Tennant had to be one of the most a-dork-able actors ever) when I can scare them up online, as well as "Torchwood". Can I just squee over Captain Jack Harkness?? He's like Mal Reynolds's hornier cousin from the 51st century.

So I took a look at the traffic report for my fics on fanfiction.net and I'm surprised and delighted with the results:

( Cut to fit a table )

This is just the top ten of my fics on there, and I'm surprised and delighted that my one "Truman Show" magnum opus is in the top slot. I'm also pleased that my two "Gattaca" fics ("Flesh of My Flesh" and "Blood of My Blood") are in the top ten. Three of my Cecie Martin stories ("Conversations...", "Runnin' Loose..." "One of THOSE...") are in the top ten, as well; I'm puzzled as to why "The Shadows Between the Neon" isn't there, as it's the best of the series, but it is a long (and somewhat gruesome) story. I'm pleased at how well my two personal favorite "Yami no Matsuei" fics ("Akatsuki" and "Tale of the Kun-Lun Slave") are doing. And the sheer number of people reading my "A.I."/"Harry Potter" crossover is making me realize I need to get back to that one, though I have to say, I'm still not sure where I was going with that one; I've got the climax written, but the hard part is *getting there*. We'll see...

I'm also glad I signed up on "An Archive Of Our Own": I like the interface immensely (being able to upload your fic from *anywhere* online -- that alone is priceless and well worth the waiting period I had to go through when I signed up) and I like the extremely high quality of the writing on there. Granted, a lot of the fics tend to be copied over from LiveJournal, but there's a lot that aren't anywhere else online. I wish there was a little more traffic, and that people would comment on things I've posted, but it's like a little known hideaway in a big city: you know that the people who go there really value the place and the service it provides.

Also have been poking around on Amazon.com and found a DVD of (don't laugh) one of my favorite Sesame Street specials ever, "Big Bird in Japan"; I was getting older (middle-school/junior high school) when this one first aired on PBS, but I remember it fairly well, up to and including having one of the songs from it ("We're Going to Kyoto") come back to me. Well, to quote C.S. Lewis "When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childish things", so I've ordered a copy.

Download sites are unreliable at times. I don't know *how* many dub sites I tooled around in which either had the series available only as:

1.) MegaVideo uploads, and MegaVideo has that cruddy limit on how many vids you can watch in a day unless you sign up for their subscription.

2.) Veoh and had it under a Mature rating, which means you have to download their player in order to watch it and I feel a little suspicious about it.

3.) YouTube segments of ten minutes each, which means occasionally having to hunt for the next segment.

Or they didn't have it all. Blasphemy! What dub site does *NOT* have Neon Genesis Evangelion?! (probably a site run by the same twits who posted one star reviews for it on Amazon, slammed it up and down for being "too complicated" and TYPE IN ALL CAPS) It's a freakin' *classic* anime series.

So I knuckled down and bought the DVD set. For some reason, it doesn't include End of Evangelion, so... I'm trying to find it on Amazon.com. And it's not cheap: I've seen it priced at over $100 US. o.o

Anyone know someone who's selling it at a reasonable price??

Dad has to work this afternoon, but we managed to get to Mass at Holy Trinity in spite of this and also the St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston. I'm taking it easy today: hey, Sunday's a day of rest, after all.

Rule of thumb when trying to rent movies: Never try renting an Irish Mob movie around St. Patrick's Day. Especially if said movie is set in Southie (South Boston) and you live about twenty miles northwest of the city. This will be the third time I've tried to rent "The Departed" and every. Single. Copy. At Blockbuster. Was. Out. I did manage to rent "The Prestige", which I've been trying to rent, and which Mark has highly reccommended to me more than once. Will be watching it momentarily, unless I get a brain flash idea for one of the current writing projects.

Finished reading "Fool Moon" (I wanna see more of the back story on Billy and the Alphas. Those kids are cool! And we know I like werewolves.) and am much of the way through "Grave Peril". And as a sure sign I'm fairly deep into the Dresden Files fandom: I'm already cringing at the thought of bad fanfics showing up. For starters, if Thomas appears in the TV series, I'm anticipating Harry/Thomas slash. This despite the fact that Harry at one point says (in a different context, but it still needs to be pointed out to the would-be slash writers), "I'm not gay."

I can think of more stuff I don't wanna see: ( Spoilerish cringing ahead )

Just in from the National Plastics Museum in Leominister; back in the day, the town was the center for American celluloid manufacture. I'll admit, this has to be one of the more quirky museums I've been in: what other museum would have a glass case full of Tupperware or stackable plastic dishes of a make that I swear I remember seeing in a friend's house back in the 1980s? I rather liked their display of antique celluloid combs and bakelite trinkets. A bit on conservation which compared a stack of plastic grocery bags to an equal amount of paper bags made me smile, as did a display card asking the question "Paper or Plastic?" I wish I'd had a pad of sticky-notes on me, I'd have mischievously posted a reply: "Default is plastic in a certain lane at the ( ::Store Name Witheld for Security Reasons:: ) in T-------- Be a dear and ask the bagger first if you want paper."

And I got my Hallowe'en present for myself: the Season One box set of "Supernatural". I know I haven't posted much about this year's episodes, but so far they've been pretty good, better than last year's almost. ( Beware of spoilers )

LOTR fans among my readers, take note.

****1/2 out of *****

I spotted this in Blockbuster Video the other day and it looked so quirky, I just had to take it out. It's the brainchild of the wonks at TheOneRing.Net, with Dominic "Merry Brandybuck" Monaghan narrating. Basically, it chronicles the LOTR fandom and how J.R.R. Tolkien unwittingly created -- or rather "sub-created" -- a whole new genre of imaginative fiction. Unlike some it's more staid BBC counterparts, this film is loveably goofy, full of tidbits about the oddballs in the fandom, from a guy in London in the 1960s who started a Tolkien-themed hippie commune he called "Gandalf's Garden" to a couple in California who lovingly built and maintained a small roadside attraction with diaromas of scenes from "The Hobbit" (Did you know that the Beatles wanted to make an LOTR movie?) to the modern-day fans of the movie and the Internet community of Tolkien fans. The filmstock is a little pixellated (at first I thought there was something wrong with my DVD player), and I was a little disappointed that Tolkien's deep Catholic faith, which influenced his writing, was never mentioned, but it's a neat, fun little film, clearly a labor of fannish love. Tolkien would be rather embarassed by this film (and he was mortified by the amount of fannish attention he got for his work), but I hope he'd be able to see the love that went into filming it.

Excellent appointment with my therapist today: I shared quite a bit on my headspace dwellers this time, and she seemed really cool with it. I'm lucky to have her helping me...

Nipped into the library downtown to return some books and take care of some print jobs. Got out two more DVDs:

--"Moulin Rouge!" Yes... Baz Luhrmann's masterpiece, which I've been meaning to see for ages.

--Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", the 2002 restoration edition, which is so far the best restoration yet, or so I've been told.

And one of my all-time favorite books: Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story". I saw the original movie back when I was 12 or 13, when I went through a wierd period. I think I went through some sort of crisis just after I hit puberty: The fact that I'd become an adult physically affected me deeply. I figured it was time I cast off "childish" things, like fantasy and headspace-dwellers/imaginary friends. Occam's Razor to the enth degree, and damned if that thing doesn't cut both ways. Then, on a friend's reccomendation, I watched the movie... and it shook me back into myself, if that makes any sense. It made me realize how much "fantasy" and "reality" depend on each other, and how much we need both to be fully human. So I let my then imaginary friends/headspace dwellers come back home, as it were.

Watched "Corpse Bride" -- wow, what a sweet, macabre-ly funny and touching movie! And now I'm trying to find the soundtrack on Amazon.com. Definately got a few Ref Award Noms coming for that!

I should have warned everyone that I was going to our town's library last night. Sorry about that!

I got out:

--Brian Jacques's "A Redwall Winter Feast": I'm a sucker for anything in the Redwall series (even watched most of the lovely Canadian-made animated TV series based on the first book, when it aired for one week on one of the local PBS stations), and when I saw this picture book in the winter books display in the kids' section, I just had to get it.

--"The Physics of Superheroes": which proves that there *are* some credible scientific principles at work in some comic book series (I'd prefer if someone would write a book like this inspired by certain Vertigo Comics series, since we all know I'm a "Vertigeek", but this is still really clever).

--"Princess in Training": the latest installment in the "Princess Diaries" series. It's an improvevment over the last few books and mini-books, but I honestly want to bash Lana Weinberger's teeth in for telling Mia that "college guys expect their girls to Do It" and thus getting poor Mia's little heart in a knot.

--And a DVD I've been going crazy looking for: the 1984 version of "A Christmas Carol", featuring George C. Scott. This one follows the book the most closely of all the different screen adaptations I've seen over the years, even capturing the dark shadows that lurk at the fringes of the narrative.

( When soulbonds detest other SBs' friends )

Continued from my previous post: I had to get a towel because I started drooling over those pics I posted...

We managed to get to Mass at Holy Trinity today: The people of real-world version of Sankt Maria Magdalena's may be finally getting the word across. The heads of the group trying to keep the church open were recently able to speak with Bishop Mallegant's real world counterpart, Archbishop He Who Must Not Be Named in Front of the Matrix Refugee. And he *listened* to them this time. The last time they tried to speak with him, *he* did all the talking and wouldn't let us folks get a word in edgewise. Also, the Vatican may be taking punative action against Archbishop He Who Must Not Be Named: they've found that he handled the reconfiguration to be completely unethical (eg. Police arresting people holding vigils inside churches, closing dates getting moved up, with or without warning, etc.). Stay tuned...

I ended up chatting with a few folks I hadn't seen in a while, so unfortunatly, I missed seeing an incident in the parking lot, involving a pigeon and a plastic bag. Apparantly, one of the pigeons that make their home on the roof of Holy Trinity had gotten the handle of a plastic bag caught around his neck. He kept running around, trying to shake it off, and he tried flying to escape from it, but the bag acted like a parachute and it kept pulling him down. My dad and one of the older kids who come to Mass at HT tried cornering him, but he kept running under cars to get away from this strange predator. My mother managed to coax the bird out from under one car, whereupon the kid put his foot on the bag, and my dad got ahold of the pigeon and pulled the bag off the bird. The pigeon was fine and flew right away. I suspect that's the last time he tries fishing for treats in a tempting plastic bag, though.

And it was one year ago that I went to WorldCon with Mark... My, how the year flew by.... Read here for the whole story: http://www.livejournal.com/users/matrixrefugee/30252.html One year ago, I was at the Academy Awards of sci-fi... One year ago I started my admiration for Neil Gaiman... I think the next U.S. WorldCon is supposed to be in Columbus, Ohio, in 2007. Maybe I'll make it! I didn't go this year, since they're holding it in Glasgow, Scotland, which is too far for me, at this point; and next year it's is in Tokoyo, Japan: definately too far, and I don't speak Japanese.

Last, and probably least, the joys of watching DVDs with a soulbond, in this case Ref looking over my shoulder as I watch the behind-the-scenes documentaries on "The Matrix: Revolutions": ( Cannonballs through Rows of Old Washing Machines )

Just in from Blockbuster, using the other of the free rental cards my mother ended up giving to me: I rented "Osama" yesterday -- have yet to watch it, though it's one I've been wanting to see -- and I got "Vanity Fair" today. They've been pulling some of their rarely-rented DVDs and putting them up for sale; lo and behold, but "Man of the Century" (aka. the movie that might as well be about Frank Sweitz the Jazz-Age Heroic Reporter) was one of them, so I snapped that up.

Thursday night (actually early Friday morning), I finally watched the deleted scenes on the "Constantine" DVD; pretty good stuff, though if you've read the movie novelization, it's pretty familiar ground (*very* familiar ground for me, actually, since I've kept the book within reach while I've been writing "The Smoke of Satan..." and "Changing of the Guard").

( Houseparty Hijinks: The Demon Hunter's 2 cents on the Cut Scenes )

And only ten days more till "Sahara" comes out on DVD. Let's hope "Deleted Scenes" translates to "more Lambert".