honey bee

katernater @ 9:29pm: It's tradition.
I've painted my nails a sparkly, iridescent colour in honour of finals week, and,

katernater @ 7:47pm: Aaaaaand....
DONE.

And it feels so good.

katernater @ 3:19pm: Down in the Underground you'll find someone true.
One take-home exam down, one to go. It took me a day and a half to do the TESOL exam, mostly because, for some reason, my brain wasn't engaged yesterday. I've got New Media on my plate and I'm just waiting for my professor to e-mail me the exam. 'Guess that means I've got a little free time this afternoon! Yay!

Todd and I watched Labyrinth the other night. He hadn't seen it before, which was crazy to me, because that movie (along with Jurassic Park) was a fundamental part of my childhood. (I suspect it's also where I got my fetish for androgynous guys in puffy poet shirts.) How do you get through a "proper '80s childhood" without seeing Labyrinth? It's incredible, but that movie stands the test of time: Jim Henson and co. managed to make everything look perfect. I mean, Todd and I watched a trailer for Madagascar the other day and we both thought that even though the movie was released, like, two years ago, it already looks shlocky. Labyrinth, on the other hand, despite its pervasive misuse of green screen technology, still looks awesome.

As a result, I've been poking around the online Labyrinth fanfic archives (shut up) and I've come across some really, ah, interesting stuff. 'Thing that bugs me is that almost every writer will mention Jareth's "mismatched eyes" at one point or another -- "Jareth's strange, mismatched eyes brooded and considered the fair babe in front of him" -- when, in reality, Bowie's eyes aren't two different colours at all. He got into a fight when he was a kid (over a girl) and the other kid took a swing and him at nicked Bowie's eye with his thumbnail. As a result, his pupil is permanently dilated. Writers, his eyes aren't two different colours. David Bowie is just a badass.

Todd and I should go as Sarah and Jareth next Halloween.

I could totally pull off a pair of skin-tight jodhpurs.

longtimegone @ 12:25pm: Huh, well that's weird.
So it just occurred to me after seeing the 5745395734th post about ZOMG VICTORIA BITTER CAME BACK AS thanfiction IN THE HP FANDOM, that the reason that LJ name looked familiar to me is because I read that huge fic he (she? I'm not clear on gender identification here) wrote called Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. I even recced the fic as a part of a larger rec post of fic and vids back in May.

Crazy shit, yo. It was kind of driving me nuts where I knew that LJ name from though, and I'm glad I figured it out.

ETA: The first link above goes to the current fandom wank entry about Victoria Bitter being outed as thanfiction. If you would like to read a consolidated version of the exploits of Victoria in the Lord of the Rings fandom (it was some seriously crazy and fucked up shit), then you can click HERE to read the VB entry on the fandom wank wiki.

I know some of you already know all this/don't care, but I always appreciate a link to shit that is referenced in a post. :D

This entry was originally posted at http://longtimegone.dreamwidth.org/459774.html and has comments. You can comment here on LJ or click here to reply to this entry on DW.

katernater @ 1:17am: The Man Who Sold the World : Bowie picspam
...Todd and I watched Labyrinth.



( I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.  )

longtimegone @ 10:25pm: God, Seriously, SO MUCH LOVE for Glee
I just watched the last two episodes of Glee, and I finished in tears of joy. I love this show so much. It just makes me happy. I've never watched something that so consistently made my heart feel all bursty.

I LOVE THAT FEELING. <33333333333

This entry was originally posted at http://longtimegone.dreamwidth.org/459433.html and has comments. You can comment here on LJ or click here to reply to this entry on DW.

katernater @ 9:25pm: Some of it's just transcendental / some of it's just really dumb
I'm in love with this song tonight: "The Book of Love" - Peter Gabriel

So, class was canceled because of the weather. Good thing, because the wind's really picking up out there. I felt like I kept getting shoved along while I was walking to class this morning. Tomorrow won't be as bad. I don't have class until 4:30, and I'm sure the salt crews will have been out by that time, clearing the roads. We got lucky. I think we only saw about three inches of accumulation. Other places, mostly north of us, got up to ten. I heard that Arizona got twenty. Snow in Flagstaff. Thanks, Al Gore!

longtimegone @ 11:38pm: OMG CRIMINAL MINDS
So, in the last two weeks I've been devouring Criminal Minds. I LOVE THIS SHOW SO MUCH. I am not usually a girl for procedurals, beyond A&E marathons when I am cleaning house, but dude, this show.

This show focuses very much on 1) the process of FINDING a killer and 2) the team that does that. I think I've never been particularly interested in straight up police work or the process of prosecution in the courts, which is why I haven't really ever gotten stuck on any of the CSIs and the like.

I have always been interested in criminal profiling. I find it fascinating, and I think that played a large part of my interest in Fox Mulder (aside from David Duchovny's smoking hotness and emo man pain, becuase dude, he is hot and he gives good emo man pain). I always loved the X Files that focused on Mulder's profiling background, and when I was reading X Files fic, quite a few of my favorites were pre-X Files stories that focused on Mulder's work as a profiler.

So it's no wonder I love this show. But there are other big reasons to like the fact that the women aren't just window dressing (I actually believe that JJ, Emily and Penelope, in addition to being fully fleshed out characters and smart, strong women, are friends). And how they totally play with traditional gender roles (Dr. Reid ♥ as the Damsel in Distress, anyone?). And I really love how it's a show with no easy answers each week. They are very good with grey areas. Sometimes, I even find myself feeling sympathy for the killers, or feeling gross about the victims. It's kind of weird, but I like that it's got a good mix.

Another thing I like about this show is that it really works to avoid every week being about some poor helpless woman who succumbs to the nasty male big bad serial killer. Considering that, in real life, the overwhelming majority of serial killers are male and their victims are usually women, this show really has a good balance. It still definitely skews male killer/female victim, but it's not every week. Many times the killers have been women, and the victims are males. And when the victims are women, the ones that survive, while they are usually "saved" by the BAU team? They are smart and savvy and have agency (yeah yeah yeah, I know that's hard when tied up in a basement somewhere, but IT HAPPENS) that sees them through to their rescue. It's not perfect, but god, it's so awesome.

I am also incredibly pleased to see a woman of size (i.e. not a size 4), Penelope Garcia, be such a positive character. She's a super hot hacker girl who works as the technical analyst for the BAU. She's smart, funny, optimistic, beautiful and incredibly likeable. Not only is she shown as being extremely competent at her job and having genuine friendships with the team, particularly the other female characters and the smoking hot Derek Morgan, but she's portrayed positively as a sexual being...not for laughs. I am so impressed by this.

It's not a perfect show, and they do occasionally fall down, even on the points I bring up above as reasons to love/watch, but I appreciate so much the continued effort to write a smart show with strong females (and hot guys, seriously, there's something here for EVERYONE), that I can forgive the occasional slip and sometimes gratuitous torture porn shots.

I could blab on and on about this show, especially since I just marathoned the whole thing in about two weeks (I'd seen a lot of the episodes already), but I need to go to bed. :D I am going to start watching it live now, and I hope that S5 continues to be awesome.

Also, while there haven't been any spoilers in this post, really, there may be some in the comments, so you know, read with caution.

This entry was originally posted at http://longtimegone.dreamwidth.org/459235.html and has comments. You can comment here on LJ or click here to reply to this entry on DW.

katernater @ 5:41pm: This is my new favourite icon.


The downside of the holiday season. That's not a smudge on the camera lens. It's a half an inch of sleet and ice. I actually left the apartment an hour and a half before class because I was worried about sliding around on the highway. And all of those big, burly SUVs kept darting around me -- I was going, like, fifteen under the speed limit -- kicking up wet road grit. And the only reason I'm out at all is because we've got presentations in class tonight and, since it's the last class, I felt doubly bad about staying home. The girl sitting next to me is also in my class and lives about as far away from campus as I do. She's freaked out about driving home at 9:15 tonight, too. Blerg. Class should have been canceled.

This morning, Todd and I went to see about an apartment closer to campus. We stopped by the leasing office of the most promising candidate, but they told us they leased the last remaining one-bedroom last week. That was the place that even offered a student discount. I don't know where Todd and I are going to live next semester. It sucks, because we both want to be closer to campus and, given the way the weather's been acting, I'm really pressing that objective. I hate driving the highway when I have to contend with the ice.

I KNOW I'M COMPLAINING A LOT, BUT GOOD LORD. MY BLOOD PRESSURE.

katernater @ 10:16am: It's beginning to feel a lot like...
Wow! 'Woke up this morning to snowflakes -- both real and virtual! Thanks to everyone who dropped a virtual snowflake onto my userinfo page! We also got our first snowfall of the year here; a light dusting, but it makes things seasonally appropriate. I was weirded out by the fact that Texas got snow before we did this year. People around here are already acting like asshats because of the change in the weather, I can't imagine what it's like for folks who only see snow in department store dioramas.

This is the last week before finals. I accomplished a lot last week (at the expense of eating and sleeping) and I'm in a good position to ride out the rest of the week. I can't wait to go home for Christmas. I'm going to stick around campus (at least as long as the library's open) to do a little more graduate research. 'Think I'll be heading home on the 22nd or 23rd. I have about a two week break, then it's right back to the academic grind. I'll be taking a couple of pretty interesting courses next semester, in addition to all of my extracurriculars. Todd and I are also planning to move to be closer to campus, so that'll be an event when it finally comes around.

I put Christmas music on my iPod this morning. 'Tis the season!

katernater @ 11:52pm: RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
"From South Africa (Clint Eastwood) to Santa Monica (Governor Schwarzenegger) to Jack Nicholson's house (um, Jack Nicholson), Empire trotted the globe to deliver you 27 of the planet's biggest stars, recreating iconic performances from two decades in film, for a unique 20th birthday celebration."

Photographs by Bradley Patrick, Sara Dunn, Keith Bernstein, Adrian Green and Robert Gallagher. [ Empire Magazine ]




THIS MOVIE WAS THE CENTRAL PREOCCUPATION OF MY CHILDHOOD.

( More of my favourites )

The rest here.

Originally seen on swankyfunk's journal.

Also, ( Have you seen the new Iron Man still? )

katernater @ 1:41pm: "Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose."
I'll finish my my TESOL certificate at the end of this semester, but I met with my instructor this morning and found out that she has recommended me to an independent study program on campus. I'm free to choose the topic of my research, but we have tentatively decided that I'll be exploring the usefulness of creative writing in foreign language classrooms. Specifically, how K-12 second language programs use (or don't use) short story and poetry-writing exercises as a way to play with and "claim" the language they are learning. There's great potential in this project. If my research goes well, I could theoretically submit my paper to the national conference! I wouldn't knock an expenses-paid trip like that, even if it's to Des Moines.

In addition to the independent study program, I fully intend to reprise my role as an ESL instructor at the International Center next semester, as well as offer private tutoring for the students who need it. I'm also signed up for another semester of graduate assistantship. Busy, busy, busy -- but I love it!

Gonna' spend most of tonight in the Mac lab, editing a group project for New Media. Then, tomorrow, maybe drinks with the girls? We'll have to see how things go.

I'm so happy I decided to do graduate school. This is the one place I feel that I'm truly meant to be.