cupidsbow, posts by tag: misc - LiveJournal

Dear fellow space-lover,

Thank you so much for making something for me! Hopefully what follows will make that as easy as possible for you. :)

First and foremost, please make something you love. That will always lead to something good, and I will appreciate the love you've put into it. The notes below are meant as a guide to what I like, but not as a prescription you must follow to the letter. I really like stuff that's experimental and takes chances, so by all means use my prompts as a starting point, and then follow your muse!

( Collapse ) This entry was originally posted at https://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/457908.html.

I was feeling nostalgic for Trek today...

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This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/37….

In my inbox today:

Dear Amazon.com [not since gay-fail] Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated Torchwood: Almost Perfect by James Goss, you might like to know that Curious George A Winter's Nap (CGTV Reader) (Curious George Early Readers) will be released on August 9, 2010. You can pre-order yours by following the link below.

I find this particularly amusing in light of RTD's latest press blitz about the new season of Torchwood, in which he says, to summarise: 1) OMG, season 4 will be so frickin' dark! and 2) Jack is American, doncha know, 4 srs.

God, I'm still laughing.


PS -- If you are wondering, Almost Perfect is funny and enjoyable. I recommend it.

PPS -- Call me deluded, but somehow, I doubt Curious George: A Winter's Nap has a central premise of Curious George spontaneously changing gender and having a giant, deadly orgy. Please let me know if I'm wrong, so that I can buy it immediately.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/35….

Is there anything more decadent than snacking on banana dipped in melted chocolate? (nomnomnom)

Does Torchwood fandom have the best timetravel and time paradox stories ever, or what? (do not tell me Dr Who is better -- I don't have time to read in that fandom!)

Why-oh-why is the hit rate for finding awesome Torchwood stories so appalling? (gah x a billion; thank god for torchwood_house)

Is it my imagination, or are people starting to get over the End-of-SGA horror? (don't look at me, I'm still grieving over John's lack of a happy ending. Curse you PTB)

Where are the following Torchwood stories, which clearly must have be written???

• The Very Secret Diaries of Ianto Jones
  
• The Jack mpreg that doesn't make my eyes cross (no, no, of course I don't have a plot for this sitting in the back of my head. Are you crazy?)
  
• The gossip fic, in which Torchwood One era Ianto collects the rumours about Captain Jack and writes them up in methodical categories in his diary.

Is it just me, or do you get a jittery Chistmas-morning feeling when you imagine the next episode of rageprufrock's Merlin AU, Redefining Protocol? (omg, I think she's going to have Merlin attend official functions as Arthur's partner and then write up snippets of the following news reports. *stuffs fist in mouth and makes embarrassing noises*)

Finally, when will I get my writing mojo back? When, dammit, when?? (I'm at that stage of recovery where the ideas are starting to pop pop pop, but I still don't have the mental energy to actually string words together. Still, my superpowered-robot-exoskeleton Jack and secret-alien Ianto story is pleasing me very much, even if it will never be written. As are the Little Red Riding Hood Merlin story, and the corporate Canadian kidfic McShep story. *happysigh*)

So, that's me. What are your questions for the ages?

There are five ficlets so far in the comments of the latest Summary Executions game: pirates, nursery rhyme crime, regency romance, dragons, and dentisty.

Plus, there's a ficlet about ski instructors by v_greyson, and a link to art by crysothemis. *hearts them both*

I'm still picking away at the other prompts, but if you'd like to come in and write snippets about any of the scenarios I've already done, that would a) make me hugely happy and b) probably inspire me to write more. :)

I've had one of those weeks where stuff happens and yet it's not the kind of stuff I can post about. Either because it's a sekrit (omg remix), or because it's boring, or because I know mr_booboo will do it so much more justice than I can.

But I feel like I haven't talked to any of you in ages. *waves* What are you all up to? Other than reading cesperanza's new story?

Other than the stuff I can't talk about, I read this great essay the other day, on the cult of originality and the importance of influence in art: The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem. It's such a beautifully done piece of writing. But, of course, I'm the choir. :)

In other news, how much do I want to sign up for mcshep_match? Serioulsy, it's not gonna happen, but oh, how I ache to be on the team! I can't decide which team, but I ache to play anyway.

Also, did you guys know we have a National Public Toilet Map? It turns out there are only 50 public toilets in the whole of the Gascoyne, apparently, and 49 in the Kimberley. I could make several jokes in poor taste about this sad state of affairs, but I will womanfully refrain.

And now I return to battling with the remix.

How I survived cancer twice, and you can too, by cupidsbow

Since Monday, I have been attempting to catch up with my life. I think I'm about a quarter of the way there (and can I just say ewwwww: being too busy to clean for 6 weeks is yet another reason I'm never overloading on work like that again!), but I'm taking a time-out this morning to make a public service announcement that I intended to make waaaay back at the start of summer. It's about cancer, and I know that's both boring and scary, but death rates are going up in Australia for cancers which are treatable if caught early, so it's time for a reminder.

Part of what has made me so whingy and stressed in the last six months (apart from unintentionally over-committing myself to work -- never again!) is that I've been dealing with three cancer scares on top of everything else. Two were for skin cancer, one was for cervical cancer.

Only one of these scares turned out to actually be cancer, and I got lucky. It was the least deadly of them, the humble BCC, or Basal Cell Carcinoma.

It has now been successfully treated, and assuming I pass my follow-up exam in four months, I'm all clear. Cancer gone. No more stress until the next scare.

The thing is, there will be a next scare. Probably in a year or so, given my age.

There will be one because nearly 1.8% of Australia's population are treated for non-melanoma skin cancers each year (Cancer Council website).

There will be one because this BCC I've just had removed is the second skin cancer I've been diagnosed with. And the first... well, it was the biggy. Melanoma. I was 17, and I hated sunbathing, and mostly spent my days fully-dressed reading books, and I still got melanoma -- right on the line of my bathers near the small of my back, right where it's easy to miss putting sunscreen.

Skin cancer is not a disease that happens to other people in Australia. We are right under the hole in the ozone layer, we're near the equator, we spend a lot of time outdoors. This is an equal opportunity cancer, and the odds are high that all of you reading this, if you live in Australia, will get skin cancer at some point in your life. All of you.

I'm not trying to scare you stupid with this sad tale of woe (although a little fear is a healthy thing, given the incidence). The point I'm making is that if you go through the relatively minor stress of regular testing, you live. If you don't, there is a real chance you will die. This is not hyperbole. Last week (if memory serves), there was a front page story in The West Australian which said that deaths from BCC were going up. The speculated reason was because people think of it as a "safe" cancer, and so put off getting it treated.

It is a "safe" cancer, in that if you treat it early, you are likely to live. People do die of it, though. Of the roughly 400,000 people diagnosed/treated with non-melanoma skin cancers, there were 405 deaths attributed to BCC in Australia in 2005 (Cancer Council website).

To get tested, go to your local GP and get them to look at any odd-shaped or coloured moles; then ask for a referral to a dermatologist. Once you have one, it'll take about 6 months to actually get in to see him or her. It's worth the wait. Molescan is a good service, but it can and does miss cancers. There's nothing like the trained and practiced eye of an expert to catch problems before they are problems.

If you think you have a dodgy mole get it checked this week. You will notice that even when I was a walking zombie with no time to wash dishes, I still made time to get my moles checked. That is because I want to live. Do not fuck around with cancer. I've seen it kill someone up close and personal. You don't want this to happen to you, believe me.

If you get a dodgy mole checked and your GP says it's nothing, keep an eye on it; if you are still worried, get a referral anyway and see the expert. You know your skin and its changes better than a GP does, and they are not specialists. No matter how good they are, they can get it wrong if the cancer doesn't look like a textbook case.

To find out what skin cancers look like, go to the Cancer Council website. They are a bit gruesome, but it's worth taking a look. My melanoma was prettier than the one pictured. It was dark black, a little rough, and almost a clear-lined oval. My BCC was a mole that changed colour, turning red and starting to grow outside the lines. Neither looked exactly like the pictures I've seen in pamphlets.

If you have any questions or worries, or want to know what something was like so that you're mentally prepared, go ahead and ask in comments. I'm not a medical expert, but I can tell you what it was like for me.

But the important thing is: get tested, do it often. Live.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled cupidsbow...

I'm just locking up some old posts that I don't want floating out there now that there's lots of random traffic through my LJ (*waves at random traffic*).

The easiest way to do that, as there's five years worth of posts, is to f-lock everything and then go through and unlock. It'll take me a while, but all the writing meta and fiction will be back as soon as possible.

ETA: My God, I'm a whiny bitch. It's embarrassing. Note to self: don't read old LJ entries. o_O

ETA 2: Okay, I've gone through all the essays and unlocked them, and all the fanfic except Lotrips (which I'll tackle after my nap). I've also scanned back as far as 2006 and unlocked everything fannish and/or open for public discussion (such as polls and recs); I plan to do a quick scan all the way back to 2003.

If I've still got a post locked that you use, please let me know. This lockdown is targetted at stuff to do with teaching, real life, etc. It's not meant to lock up resources that people use.

There have been several posts I planned to make over the last few days, but marking has been sapping my will to live, or at least to post. However, some things will not wait any longer!

To those who left valentines for me on the lovely svmadelyn's Valentine's Day post... thank you so much. They gave me a real lift, I can't even begin to tell you. They also made me laugh and laugh given the topic of my last post. Heee.

Those of you on my flist who have not yet gone to look at the Valentine's Day post, you should, as there are messages for several of you in there. :)

Also on the list of cool things happening lately is rent_a_fangirl, a new community in which people can make a post if they're keen on filling an SGA fan art/fic/vid prompt for someone. Such a cool idea. I wish I was better at writing to prompt. However, you can bet your favourite songvid, I will be trying my best to cajole people into making pretty things in response to my prompts. Oh, yes indeedy.

What else? Vids! Now I remember. veni_vidi_vids are going to be starting up regular compilations of vid recs -- kind of like "rec the reccers" taken to eleven! The feed is already up, although they aren't making newsletter posts yet. Soon, my pretties. *rubs hands together* The feed is here: http://del.icio.us/veni_vidi_vids

On a more fictional front, toomuchplor is hosting a six-word story challenge for SGA. Mmmm. So many kiss-sized McSheplets. Awesome.

I have a horrible feeling that I've forgotten something I meant to post about... nope it's gone. Oh well. This should be enough to keep you out of mischief for a while anyway. And next week, I may have a post on Australian copyright law as it relates to convergence culture. Doesn't that make your heart sing with anticipation?

I know, it's almost too sexy to bear! Believe me, the paper that's going to come out of all the reading I'm doing will be so sexy, it'll give even John Sheppard a run for his money. *looks at you from under eyelashes, while leaning against a doorframe*

I will leave you with that thought.

*goes back to the unshrinking piles o' marking*

Off to ruralise. I'll have limited internet access for the next week, but if you need something you're welcome to drop a comment here, and I'll sort it out when I get back.

Happy new year, everyone.