the mermaid cafe

I feel ridiculously sluggish, considering I got a full 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Also, it's still freaking cold.

I hate when people tell me that you can just put on more layers because no, sometimes you can't. Today I am wearing a polar fleece pullover. To go outside, I then put on a fleecy hoodie over my fleecy pullover, a large fleecy scarf over my fleecy hoodie, and over all of that, a coat that is lined with fake fur and is very warm. I also wore a hat (well, a baseball cap). I hate wearing a hat. And gloves. Fucking gloves. I have to take them off all the time to find my tissues or my metrocard or adjust the volume on my iPod. They are annoying and I hate them, but without them, my hands freeze and the skin cracks and that is just painful and unpleasant and to be avoided at all costs.

I hate wearing three extra layers and standing on the bus stop for three minutes and still being cold. I can't add another layer when the bus doesn't come! I can't add another layer when I have to walk seven blocks to the subway. I am stuck wearing the four layers I put on when I left the house, which is three layers too many, in my opinion, and which is ridiculously uncomfortable. Because then I get on the bus or the subway or I go into the grocery store and I sweat under all my layers. And then I have to go back outside again where it's cold. Ugh. The whole endeavor is loathsome.

I honestly don't recall this many super cold days in winters past. I remember a week or two of this kind of thing in January, usually, but this has been going on since December. We didn't even have a January thaw like we normally do. I hate winter. I hate everything about winter. I hate being cold. I especially hate that it lasts for freaking ever. Why can't it be summer now?

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Anyone interested in some dvd commentary? Meme seen all over:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

I can't guarantee that I'll remember anything from before 2006 or so, and even that's kind of dicey, but ask away if you like.

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You know, I get that many media fans are not sports fans, and really have no interest in the major league American team sports, but jesus, mary and joseph, baseball does not have halftime! Hockey does not have quarters! American football is played from September to February! You can't just throw in a random jumble of sports terms and the name of a team and hope it makes sense! Especially not if you are making one of your characters a sports fan (or sports anchor *cough*).

You do research about other aspects of your story, don't you? I mean, it's one thing if the character isn't supposed to know anything about sports, but if you're making one of them, say, a Cubs fan, then you should know that the Cubs play National League baseball (and yes, it is different in some ways from American League baseball, most notably in the fact that the NL does not use the designated hitter except in interleague play taking place at AL ballparks) in the city of Chicago.

This is like having a character be a big music fan and then completely blowing the music references! (Which I have also seen in fic. Which. Dean would know the track listing on Zeppelin II! And it's not like there's a lack of Zeppelin discographies on the internet!)

It's one thing to have your characters blather on about fake arcane things like transporter beams or poltergeists or mutant powers - my suspension of disbelief is pretty rubbery and can withstand a lot. But small details are where verisimilitude lives, and making sure you've got one or two right ones, instead of a handful of wrong ones, will make your story a hell of a lot better. And I say this as someone who I'm sure gets things wrong when they're not things I know about (see: all my HP fic set in the UK), but I at least try to do a little research when it's something a character has some expertise in, even if it's just asking my dad about engines or whatever.

[/rant]

Whew. I feel better now. That one's been building a while.

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I seem to be doing a lot of list entries lately. This is another one.

= HENRIK LUNDQVIST IS MY GOALIE BOYFRIEND! \o/

= And the Mets just won 1-0 over the Brewers. They really have to start scoring runs for Johan Santana. And not just because he's amazingly pretty.

= I am still having computer troubles - I went to update ZoneAlarm and got the blue screen of death. I rebooted and it loaded, but I am not sure it's actually working. I might have to uninstall and reinstall, but I am just so weary of random computer not-working-ness.

= I wrote this whole long thing about my thoughts on subscribing and granting access on DW and then I thought, I don't even care about this, why would anyone else, so, you know, eventually it'll work itself out. You don't have to hear about it from me.

= I am also having a lot of irritation with SPN fandom right now, which is totally my issue, and I own that, but god, I do not care about Castiel. I am sure Misha Collins is a lovely man - he seems intelligent and erudite and willing to shrug off fannish weirdness - but the show has utterly failed to make me like his character (4.16 made me seriously dislike him, and possibly that is an understatement *snerk*), and all the gushing I see about him has just made me dislike him more. I realize that people who like him feel like the whole of fandom hates him, but as someone who doesn't like him, I feel like all I see are stories and posts about how awesome he is and that actively makes me dislike him more. I can't help being contrary; it's how I am about a lot of things. I'm still resentful of the way the show mishandled and then discarded Bela, because I loved her and fandom hated her, so I am really bitter about the way fandom has embraced a character who is far less interesting just because he has pretty blue eyes and a Y chromosome. (and yes, I know that's an unfair generalization; I am irrational on the subject, so I don't care.) Don't comment to try to change my mind about it. Don't rec me stories you think will make me like him. That will just make me dig in my heels more. (I realize this is pointless - last season I asked that people not slag off on Bela in my comments, and people still did so with great frequency; I try not to complain about characters I hate in the journals of people who love them [it's a fruitless exercise. no fruit for me.], and I'd appreciate the same courtesy, but alas, it is apparently not to be. Hell, I generally try not to slag off on characters I don't like in my own journal, because why waste time on people I don't like when I could be talking about people I do? So this is probably a one-off rant. But depending on how the last few episodes of the season go, I make no guarantees.)

= On the remix tip, please do not try to join remixredux09. Only moderators and sockpuppets will be given membership.

= Today's poem:

Spanish Dancer

As in one's hand a lighted match blinds you before
it comes aflame and sends out brilliant flickering
tongues to every side -- so, within the ring of the
spectators, her dance begins in hasty, heated rhythms
and spreads itself darting flames around.

And suddenly the dance is altogether flame!

With a fierce glance she sets her hair alight.
Unexpectedly she turns with daring artfulness
the swirling flounces of her dress within this
conflagration, out of which her upheld naked arms,
clapping the castanets, appear like serpents striking.

And then, afraid her fire were diminishing,
she gathers it all up and flings it down
with an imperious haughty gesture, and watches
as it lies there writhing on the ground, unyielding
and unwilling to concede the dance has ended.
Yet she shows victory in her sweet swift smile
as she lifts up her face, while with her small firm feet
she stamps out the last of the dying embers.

~Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

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