- So I just realized that I never posted the results for the unguessed pairings in the quotations ship meme a couple of weeks ago. I've now updated the post with the answers -- no one guessed Miss Parker/Jarod (The Pretender), Josh Lyman/Donna Moss (The West Wing), Olivia Dunham/Peter Bishop (Fringe), Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), or Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams (Hawaii Five-0). For shame on the last one, people. The rest I kind of expected -- serves me right for being ridiculously multifannish. The pairings that were guessed were Brad Colbert/Nate Fick (Generation Kill), Bertie Wooster/Reginald Jeeves (Jeeves & Wooster), John Watson/Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes books), Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane (Lord Peter Wimsey series), and Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski (Due South).

- I have started compulsively watching QI again. Why is Stephen Fry so awesome, seriously? I just want to be his friend, give him a hug, and sit around drinking tea and/or madeira while talking about obscure trivia. (SIGH why am I not Emma Thompson)

- Question: does anyone know where I might *ahem* look for video editing programs, with, say, an eye patch on, if you know what I mean? I've been really wanting to make some vids, but fuck if I'm going to do it with Windows Movie Maker again.

- In other, unrelated news, I can't stop listening to Janelle Monáe's song "Cold War". I'm not sure why. It's awesome. :)

I woke up waaaay too early this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, ugh. Then I wasted several hours of my life to the tentacled embrace of the state bureacracy, bought an enormous amount of sushi, and ate it while watching NCIS:LA with my sister. (Let me just say: KENSI AND DEEKS, I LOVES THEM. I still love Sam and G, too, but Kensi is the bomb, and I am incredibly fond of Deeks' puppyish facade and badass/marshmallow center, and I totally ship them, which I haven't done for a m/f cop partnership since, hmm, Life I think. I know it's not the most brilliant show in the world (HAHAHA), but it still makes me happy. ♥). I did pass the time waiting on Godot bureaucrats by re-reading Dorothy L. Sayers' awesome essay "Aristotle on Detective Fiction," though, so it wasn't a total waste of time. I like to read that essay and think about TV crime procedurals. I was thinking, I could scan it and put it up here if anyone's interested? It took me a lot of effort to obtain a copy of Unpopular Opinions in order to read it in the first place, so I'm okay with loaning it out to y'all, so to speak.

In other news, I was reading some fic earlier that made me want to put together a short rec list of chase-related stories. I love chase stories a lot -- especially when they manage to involve either spies, or falsely-accused innocent persons.

1. The fic responsible for this list: Paper Chase (Sherlock/White Collar, genish) by copperbadge. He just wrote a sequel to it, Rematch, hence the rec, because I was just thrilled. I mean, it's a Sherlock/White Collar crossover with plot! Even if it weren't written brilliantly by Sam, I would've wanted to read it. Really, really fun, I highly recommend it. (Bonus: if you're a podfic person, there's a great co-read one of Paper Chase -- the Sherlock&John-POV sections read by a Brit, and the Neal&Peter bits read by an American, which is fun.)

2. The classic: Finders Keepers (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Illya/Napoleon) by Taliesin. I know most of the young 'uns on my flist won't know this fandom, but I don't care, you should still read it. It's got spies! Running around 1960s New York! There's pie! Flirting! Shenanigans! Tie-dye! Bathhouses! Seriously, I love this fic. It's just so darn playful.

3. The remake: The Fugitive (Numb3rs). I almost didn't read this because a) I'd never seen Numb3rs before, b) it features an OFC, and c) it's on The Pit of Voles. Seriously, that's a lot of negatives. But I adore The Fugitive, so I gave it a shot, and it's really really fun. It made me want to watch Numb3rs, after which I re-read this and realized just how well-characterized it actually was. The OFC turns out to be rather awesome, and the entire team is well-written, and Don is excellent. Long! Plotty! Interesting! *thumbs up*

4. The one pretending to be just one thing: Okay, so I'm technically recommending Little Girl Lost (The Pretender, Parker/Jarod) by neonhummingbird and butterflykiki, but I kinda also just want to rec the entire show in general, which is one long, delicious game of cat-and-mouse. It also has Miss Parker, one of my favorite female TV characters ever. You think your favorite TV lady is badass? Yeah, so...Parker would have her in a quivering, submissive little puddle in about five minutes flat. She's the best. Her and Jarod's whole "you run; I chase" dynamic is probably one of the reasons I love the trope so much that I post a list like this. Warped, I tell you, warped while I was young and impressionable... :)

Okay, I guess that suffices. Um...enjoy! If you have your own favorite chase-related stories, please feel free to share.

Meme yoinked from this lovely Middleman fic:

The iPod Challenge: Put your MP3 player on shuffle and write a flashfic (I refuse to call these drabbles; I am a term purist!) about each of the first ten songs to come up. The catch? You only have the duration of the song to write it in.

I haven't really looked at these since I wrote them at 5am, so hopefully they're not terrible. I also cheated on the rules for a few of them (you will likely be able to tell which, because they are significantly longer).

Also, I have no idea where the serial killer one came from. I kept trying to figure out who the character was, but I don't think she's anybody I've met before. Whoops, accidental original!fic?

1. ( Fringe )

2. ( Generation Kill )

3. ( not sure; any female lead + serial killer, I suppose )

4. ( Supernatural )

5. ( The Pretender )

6. ( Sherlock Holmes )

7. ( Primeval )

8. ( Sports Night )

9. ( Middleman )

10. ( Magnificent Seven )

So, I'm essentially on vacation, working infrequently, and also kinda sick at the moment. When such is the case (okay, fine, I really don't even need the excuse), I tend to spend a lot of time with stories, reading and watching media. My current obsessions:

1. Reading Sherlock Holmes with thespatz.
Katie and I discovered that we both enjoy Doyle about ten times more when read aloud, because otherwise we tend to skim the big blocks of description and miss the delightful subtleties, which are happily brought out in the dramatic reading. We plan to work our way through the entire collected adventures!

2. The Pretender!
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I think this one started because we were re-watching the Burn Notice episode where Michael and his antagonist are held hostage in a bank and forced to work together. Katie mentioned the Pretender episode where that also happened, which I didn't remember, so we downloaded it for kicks. And then watched the one where Parker and Jarod are handcuffed and trapped in a hurricane. And then the pilot, and it was all downhill/the rest of S1 from there. I'd forgotten how much I loved that show, and happily, the re-watch is revealing new dimensions that I didn't really understand when I was nine. Katie stole all the things I wanted to say that were actually thoughtful, so we'll leave it at that. :)

3. Vorkosigan. Miles Vorkosigan
I'm re-reading Komarr. Um, again. This is at least the sixth time, at a conservative estimate. And then I plan to re-read A Civil Campaign, which is for more like the tenth time. :D? It's been just long enough since I last did it that I'm really enjoying the experience. *happy sigh* Gosh, I love this series.

4. Nate Fick
Okay, fiction/non-fiction collision. Along with the Generation Kill DVDs Katie and I bought, we got Evan Wright's book that inspired it, and the book that the real-life Nathaniel Fick wrote about his career as a Marine officer, One Bullet Away. I keep having to stop reading because I'm getting waaaay too emotionally over-invested. I can't help it! He talks about things like honor and duty and means it, and man, that gets to me enough when it's fictional characters. Anyway, it's serious personality-crush/fascination territory, so I'm keep avoiding/not-avoiding the book because I don't have the energy.
(side note: when buying this book from Amazon, Katie was browsing the reviews and, after reading a particularly complimentary one, went to see who wrote it – and realized it was written by Rudy Reyes, one of the Marines in Fick's unit in Iraq. It's worth a read.)

In other news, I have been coughing and wheezing at night so badly that it's kept me from sleeping, so I went to the doctor today. To my surprise, they gave me an inhaler (short-term), and hydrocodone cough syrup. I...am not sure this isn't overkill, but whatever. I'm just glad to know I won't be up until dawn tonight.

Also, I totally called that ( spoilers for NCIS:LA )