there will be a fish

So I am sick, which is fun, and perhaps an explanation for why I've been sleeping like a narcoleptic zombie for most of the past week. Yay.

Anyway, I've been wandering around my computer aimlessly, and I stumbled across this, and decided to post it for kicks -- it's sort of interesting, in a brain-archaeology kind of way. It started as me keeping a "director's notebook" for a production class (fuck, two years ago now) -- basically, our teacher had us just jot down whatever popped into our heads that was even vaguely related to our exercises, films and/or stories, and/or whatever we felt like -- and then I just kept jotting things down after that (it was easier once I had a place for it; usually I just ended up with a pile of little scraps of paper). Mine mostly tended towards untethered thoughts and intriguing concepts, sometimes little moments I witnessed in RL, sometimes just images that I liked. Anyway, the first half is the notebook; the latter is my current "original stories" file (I also have ones for fic ideas, vid ideas, and other observations [which crosses over with the original file sometimes]). Enjoy?

( warning: contains pretentious Ivy League thought processes, zombies, overthinking it, too many references to genre theory and links to Wikipedia, and emoticons )

- I find it really ironic that in my last post, it was 85 and humid and our AC was broken. The day our AC got fixed? A cold front swept through and dropped temperatures into the 50s. GOOD TIMING, WEATHER. *eyeroll*

- I really love this picture. It makes me think of school, of the screenplay I'm (still) trying to finish, and (weirdly) of H50. Also, it's just an awesome picture.

- I'm trying to decide if I want to register for my 1-year college reunion. On the plus side: the line-up of events actually looks pretty interesting, and I'd get an excuse to hang out in NYC with old friends for a while afterward. On the negative side: lots of small-talking about "how's life been since graduation?" "so what are you up to now?" and "what are you doing with your degree?", none of which are topics I feel particularly great about. Also, since I did that whole take-a-year-off-and-then-graduate-a-semester-early thing, it's a bit weird, because my graduating class isn't really the group of people that I spent the most time becoming friends with; I always felt a bit dislocated in my last year and a half.

So. I'm not really sure what I want to do. Anyone else have strong opinions or advice about college reunions?

Ugggghhh. Home stretch on the thesis, and I have lost all will to write...

Okay, does my brain look like a pretzel to you? Because it feels like one to me.

I just wrote this sentence: "This is the redemptive power of the circus: not carnivalesque reversal or transgressions between spectacle and audience narrative, but the lived narrative of spectacle, the performative quality of freakish life that no one can escape."

Does that even make sense? I don't know what I'm saying any more.

So, tonight's Fringe ( made me very happy )

Not the most scintillating or intellectual analysis, was that. I think my brain may have finally had enough of this whole "thinking" nonsense. Which is unfortunate, considering finals are like, now. *sigh*

My inability to focus has been epic today (WHY GOD WHY? the deadlines approach with the inevitability of zombies...), which tends to result in my opening a million tabs in Firefox because I'll be reading a fic and suddenly need to look up the definition of a Turing test, or check the weather, which might tangent off into looking up the etymology of petrichor (the smell of rain on dry ground), or something. Anyway, I need to clear some tabs, so, links!

A theory on why "bad" fics can be so popular, with handy graph

President Bartlet calls the Butterball Hotline

Some Biologists Find an Urge in Human Nature to Help (NY Times)

Mirrors Don’t Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes.

The graph is really quite cool, and readily applicable to any form of popular form of storytelling and not just fic. The President Bartlet clip is adorable in that unique way TWW pulls off so beautifully. Both NYT articles are very interesting, but the mirror one in particular was really freaking cool. I mean, do you know how big the reflection of your face actually is on the mirror? I didn't, before I read this. :)

Oof. Flight was delayed due to weather in Newark, and then I was the dumbest person ever and got off the Amtrak while still in NJ, so I ended up taking the PATH into the WTC and having to walk/ride the subway/lug my bags much longer/farther than I would've liked.

I also had to leave my twin, my family, my Texas Crew friends, and the miracles of Tex-Mex and legit margaritas behind, but I'm trying not to think about that.

On the bright side, I got down a few pages of thesis notes, so that's good. And I have pralines. YUM.

( have some pictures! NYC-as-Atlantis and pugs in suitcases )

UGH. I HATE doing shot breakdowns (for those who aren't film majors, a shot breakdown goes: list the timecode/duration of each shot, and describe the focal length, composition, and content -- plus lighting and sometimes sound, in the case of this project). It can take hours to do a minute's worth of footage. And this project calls for the breakdown of a ten-minute segment of Blade Runner. I, of course, got stuck with the ten minutes in Sebastian's apartment that has two separate fight scenes (and thus waaaay more cuts; I think the most so far has been five in one second, but the average is about one or two per second), instead of the parts where Ridley Scott has long takes and not much camera movement. *grumblesigh* I'm still coming off being sick, and I just want to curl up under the comforter with spy TV shows instead of frame-advancing my way through a movie I've seen about fifteen times now.

No amount of close-up freeze-frames of Darryl Hannah's thighs, for the record, makes this any more enjoyable.

Is it Friday and/or Thanksgiving break yet?

It's really hard to determine whether you have a temperature when you're a college student without a thermometer. Just so you all know.

Sometimes when I'm bone-tired or sick, instead of collapsing I go into uber-cleaning/organizing mode. Like today: I made an omelet, went to health services (pap smear, fuuuun, plus way to go not having my blood work results like they said they would), went to the bank and the grocery store, washed and dried four loads of dishes (including my suitemates' stuff), wiped down the table and stove, vacuumed the kitchen and hall, cleaned my room, cleared off my desk, budgeted money, hung pictures, and cleared out my email inbox (okay, one of them). I've also had about six cups of tea already (Prince of Wales black with apricot jam as a sweetener, lapsang souchong and oolong with milk and sugar).

Don't lie -- you all kind of want me as a roommate right now, don't you. :)

I'm pretty sure it all started because I bought white freesia and gorgeous red-orange gerbera daisies (the color of my red curtains, if you've seen them). I put them in a purple vase and set it on the kitchen table, but everything else was just so dirty, and the next thing I knew, I'd gone into cleaning frenzy. But everything looks lovely now, and the freesia smells great, but OMG am I tired. Why do I have to write response papers on the stupidest damn prompts in the world? (Answer: because I was sick and skipped my 9am discussion section last week. Curses.)

Ugh. I'm really starting to feel like crap. Definitely overdid it today...

Ugh, I should be doing reading for class tomorrow. Unfortunately, this means either a) reading dense film criticism or b) reading James Joyce. So instead I am fucking around on the internet and watching Psych and moaning in pain from my pilates class earlier. Owwwwwww. (please don't tell me that senioritis is setting in already...)

A List of Random Things That Have Crossed My Mind Recently:

- I saw a guy with a "Consent is Sexy" shirt the other day. I really think this would make an interesting fic challenge. *waves magic wand*

- There really should be more Southland fic in the world to tide me over until the premiere in October. But I've been made happy by two pieces recently: the first We Are The Same, a fusion with Homicide: Life on the Street, which is pretty cool. But what really made me clap my hands and twirl around like River Tam a crazy person? copperbadge wrote a Southland fic! He is one of my favorite fandom writers, and has that annoying ability to walk into a fandom and nail it perfectly first time out. I'm not going to complain, though, because Protective Custody gives some amazingly good Cooper POV, along with being a damn nice partnership piece. Maybe I'll go read it again now...

- I saw a bit of this Elizabeth Bishop poem tacked up on some cheesy bulletin board on campus, but I loved the line "have we room / for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?" so I looked up the full thing. It's much more biting than that image led me to expect.

- This video of a group of people pulling off a con (the "Good Samaritan") makes me want to write Leverage fic. Or at least finish that post I'm working on about David Maurer's The Big Con and Leverage and con men throughout the ages.

- I finally watched the Middleman lost episode table read from ComicCon. OMG I'd forgotten how much I love them.

- In the course of my weird project last weekend (don't ask), I may have kinda developed a tiny crush on this YouTube channel host. She's this adorable Asian girl with an Australian accent, and she occasionally makes entire videos about winking. Or maybe I was sleep-deprived, who knows.

- I was super-excited about Tim Burton's upcoming Alice In Wonderland live-action movie just on the basis of Tim Burton being the perfect heir to Lewis Carroll's particular brand of weirdness, but -- dude, I didn't realize he'd cast Mia Wasikowska as Alice! The casting of Alice can make or break this particular story, and having seen Miss Wasikowska (gosh, her name is fun to say) knock the role of Sophie on In Treatment out of the park, well, color me thrilled. She's gonna ROCK. Plus, there's Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Christopher Lee, Crispin Glover, Michael Sheen, and Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat (OMG perfect). Their casting director must've had an orgasm from the sheer cinematic serendipity of that lineup.

- Speaking of Stephen Fry, he tweeted this gorgeous link the other day. I think I have to agree with him that #11 is my favorite.

- In the pursuit of happiness procrastination an old LJ exchange I had regarding Sam and Dean dressed in that leg-baring armor the Greeks wore (which is all the fault of this story, which is not really a good AU, but still manages to be a fun story -- the characters are OOC and oddly changed to Roman names. But they're not necessarily badly characterized. Which means it's basically a historical Roman gay romance with two main characters pre-cast as Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins, featuring Jensen Ackles wearing Thracian armor and fighting as a gladiator and the both of them arguing classical philosophy and pining, so I'm not complaining). Anyway, it got me poking around my old journal entries, which is loads of fun. For instance, I found the previously mentioned exchange, which happened to include a rather prescient discussion of Sam and Dean's relationship with their father in light of something my Classical Myth prof said; the time I got to see the total solar eclipse in Turkey because I was up at 5am; an alarmingly thinky response to Pirates of the Caribbean 3; the definition of petrichor, which is the smell of rain falling on dry ground (there are scientific reasons for it!); that post I made trying to figure out Benton Fraser's birthday which is also alarmingly in-depth but was terribly fun; one of copperbadge's old House fics, which made me want to start watching again (worth it, y/n?); and aww, my first impressions of SPN, all the way back when Sarah Shahi was still "Will's girlfriend Jenny from Alias" instead of "completely awesome Det. Dani Reese from Life." :D I have to say, the latter did make me start missing the more grounded elements of S1; they've lost more than a bit of Sam and Dean's connection to the people they're saving. The "saving people" part of Dean's oft-repeated "saving people, hunting things" has become awfully abstract.

Probably should cut-tag, but waaaaay too lazy. :(