To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

I know you are all getting tired of my endless, endless B5-related chatter, so I am cutting for your reading convenience!

( Four unrelated observations/discussion points about various aspects of the series, including mention of the original Five Year Plan; the only big spoilers are for cast changes )

( Some B5 fic recs, vaguely spoilery for the whole series )

And finally, a vid rec: this video is a fan-made animation pitting ships from Star Trek, Star Wars, B5, and (old) BSG together in a big ol' firefight. Awesome.

Insta-Rec: How to Avoid Kicking Puppies and Other Valuable Lessons in Leadership, by sparky77. Ahahahahaha. Kirk attempts to be an authority figure, and hilarity results. (I wasn't even looking for Trekfic, but someone linked to it in the comments of a post I was reading, and I had to forward it once I'd read it.)

( Answers to questions from rivrea )

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It's not Halloween, but go download this video anyway. It's called "Zombie Jamboree," and includes footage from The X-Files, Pushing Daisies, Stargate, Buffy, various Star Treks, Hercules, Michael Jackson's "Thriller," Plan 9 From Outer Space, and more that I can't remember. (Oh...Fiddler on the Roof makes an appearance. Somehow.) HILARIOUS.

GIP! I can has pretty Narniaesque lamppost icon! Except it's not Narnia, but rather Gambier, and run through Photoshop at that, but, you know. Yay icon!

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This week, I finally bit the bullet and bought a copy of Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale (recommended to me months ago by wildtiger7), since it didn't seem interested in appearing on my library's shelves. It was confusing at times--and I think maybe some of Margaret's angst might have seemed less overwrought had I a sibling--but you know, mention literary research, even briefly, and I'm sold. Make your whole plot about it, and I'm definitely in. Add in creepy/crazy characters and lots of secrets, and it's even better.

Now I'm in the middle of Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast. Charlie Connelly is pretty much what Bill Bryson would be were he actually English instead of an American who's spent most of his life there, so of course I love it. In the book, he visits land at the edge of each area on the forecast (excepting, of course, the ones that are completely seabound) and apparently spends much of his trip at the pub, in between befriending Norwegians and visiting overpriced tourist attractions and complaining about commercialization of the natural world. It's fantastic.

I also bought Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies for the same reason as the other two, namely that my library system has not even a whisper of a copy. (I had a good time at Amazon last week.) It tells a story through Tarot cards and steals shamelessly from The Canterbury Tales, or so says the back flap; I haven't started it yet. In addition to what has apparently become a quest to read everything Calvino's ever written (sadly, I have yet to find one that measures up to If on a Winter's Night a Traveler), I think the Tarot as a whole is pretty interesting, so I'm excited to start that one.

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Speaking of reading, here's where I spent most of the week of Christmas. Yes, that's a link to the Talking Stick/Circle series, and yes, you should read all of it if you haven't yet, even though all eight stories/novels probably total over 2 MB of words. This is what Voyager should have been*--characters with personalities and histories and cultures; serious consequences to being alone and friendless in the Delta Quadrant, and to Janeway's penchant for interference; a crew that is obviously not all happy and united, despite what TPTB wanted us to believe. "The Rose and the Yew Tree" is mind-blowingly awesome.

I remember reading part of this as one of my first introductions to Voyager fic, back when it was still being first posted in many, many parts on alt.startrek.creative in 1996 to whenever they stopped. I never was much for in-progress stories--I want to read my fics all at once, and that is that--so I think I read the first one, saw that the second was still being posted, and promptly ignored it. (Also, I was, like, twelve at the time. I probably didn't recognize how good it was.) But I'm glad I finally read the whole thing, even if it did take me the better part of a week.

Also on the Voyager front, I saw "Lineages" the other day, and...wow. That was also really, really good. Roxann Dawson brought it to that episode, especially in the scene at the end in Sickbay with Tom. RDM did as well, but this was really B'Elanna's episode, and...yeah. It was good.

Wonders never cease, apparently.

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Two more grad school apps went off in the mail yesterday! One more to go, and it's all online, yay!


* Apparently my idea of how it should have been, and others' as well, is pretty much equivalent to "new BSG." Heh.

Quick, someone rec me a book or three. My biweekly library trip is tomorrow and I'm fresh out of ideas for things to read.

Please?

(Although I suppose I could just read fic, watch TV, and force myself to write over the next two weeks if I'm bookless...or I could delve further into my shelf of Classics I've Totally Been Meaning To Read For A While Now But Never Will Until Just This Sort of Situation...)

ETA: Most of you know my tastes, but for those of you who don't, I'll read practically anything except a straight romance. I have particular penchants for sci-fi, fantasy, quirky literary/mainstream fiction, humor of any stripe, travel writing, and historical novels or nonfiction, but really, anything goes.

Okay, it has officially Gotten Cold. (It's 68F. SHUT UP, that's cold.)

Anyway, in light of the weather and its autumnal connotations, I find myself desirous of some Halloween fanfics, and now I ask you, gentle flist, for some recs. I think I'm mostly in the mood for X-Files fic (either gen or Mulder/Scully-centric, although I will read other pairings if the the story is really excellent), but any of the fandoms listed in my interests will do.

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I watched The Matchmaker today. It was about what you would expect if I told you, "Janeane Garofalo plays an electoral staffer who gets sent to Ireland to dig up some Irish roots for the senator she's working to re-elect, and lands in a tiny town that's in the midst of an annual matchmaking festival." I'm sure you can take it from there. Vaguely amusing, though, and pretty scenery. And I swear, all though the movie, I thought for sure that the male romantic lead was one of the McGann brothers--one of the the two lighter-haired ones, I think Joe and Mark? I can't keep any of them straight, so I'm not sure. Anyway, it wasn't any of them, it was some guy named David O'Hara. Still, the resemblance from certain angles is uncanny.

Best moment:

Bar/hotel owner, Sarah: You should come to the dance, Marcy, come and have a bit o' craic.
Marcy (Garofalo): Crack?
Sarah: Yeah, it's brilliant craic.
Marcy: By "crack," I'm assuming that you don't mean incredibly hard drugs.

Heh.

So apparently there's going to be a new Sarah Jane series. Score!

There was a discussion on page 35 of this topic at the TWOP DW forum (warning: S3 spec. and spoilers) about whether, with so many spinoffs, the DW production team is stretching itself too thin. Some wag (*cough*) came up with this:

Law & Order: Shooty Dog Thing

Maybe you have to read the whole set-up, but I still can't see that without laughing so hard I start crying.

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Why is it that half of the things I write seem to involve flowers and gardens and having to know what blooms when and where? Whyyyyyy? Why do I do this to myself? I'm not totally unversed in botany, but I certainly can't think of anything that blooms in southern England in late August/early September off the top of my head, with the exception of "lots of daisy-like flowers, like asters and all that." Oy.

Speaking of that particular piece, I finally managed to write the scene that's been giving me a headache for a week. And by "giving me a headache for a week," I mean, "I have six different versions of this scene, and THEY ALL SUCK." Version number seven finally seems to have come through for me. I would've just scrapped the whole scene, except of course two lines of narration near the end are the heart of the whole story; get rid of them and there's no point in continuing.

Of course, now that I've got that down, I'm starting to think that my narrator--and, thus, the story--is coming off as twee as all get out. She is a sheltered, aristocratic seventeen-year-old girl, so some amount of tweeness is to be expected, but I begin to wonder if I've gone overboard. Anyone who's good at excising that kind of thing, has a passing familiarity with Doctor Who (it's an Eight and Charley story, but is from the POV of and mostly concerns Charley's sister, who hasn't been discussed in canon, so background knowledge is helpful but not necessary), and will have a bit of free time in about a week want to take a crack at this? Please? *puppy eyes*

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Drive-by fic rec: Go Fish, by Freelancer, a wonderfully true-to-character and very amusing Dumbledore/McGonagall short. Hee.

[By the way, HOW ADORABLE is my mood icon? This is the first time I've used that mood since I got the set, and awwwww. Eric's puppy face is love. That whole episode is awesome.]

Do you buy things from the iTunes store? If so, check out an album called "Penny Candy," a compilation of 15 tracks from various "alternative" (aka everything from folky singer-songwriter types to electronica, so not so much "alternative" as "various unknown") indie-type artists. The very best part is that it's only $3.99 for the whole album, which was what convinced me to buy it. Well, that and it has one of the songs from Hem's forthcoming album on it, which is how I heard about it in the first place.

It's got a lot of spiffy music on it from people I'd never heard of. I think I may have to become a fan of The Weepies, a husband-and-wife singer/songwriter team who do stuff in the folky, not-quite-rock-but-not-country-either style I have a particular love for. At their website, you can hear the song included on this compilation, "World Spins Madly On," if you click forward twice in the player at the bottom. This song is totally going to become a Rose song if a rather dour version of one of the outcomes I think is possible for next week's episode comes to pass. Check out the lyrics (scroll a bit). See what I mean? Given what was revealed in "School Reunion," it could work for a Sarah Jane post-Hand of Fear song as well, come to think of it.

The song by Sara Valenzuela, "Para Continuar," is dreamy and pretty and downloadable at her website. (Go to Galeria-->Extras: Downloads.) "Download This Song" is reminiscent of the BareNaked Ladies and is freaking hilarious. "Peace and Hate," "The Compromise," and "And We Lean In" are also excellent, and of course there's the Hem song, "Not California." (IMHO, not one of their better ones, but I don't think they can write/perform a bad song, so...)

[/music pushing]

There are a couple of Capercaillie fans around here, right? I have a gift certificate with which I'm thinking of buying a couple of their albums. However, there are quite a few of said albums, and I'm not sure which to go with. Y'all have any recommendations? If it helps any, of what I've heard, I'm particularly fond of "Muladach Mi is mi Air M'Aineol," "An Fair An La," "Alasdair Mic Cholla Gasda," and "Waiting for the Wheel to Turn." So I guess the stuff that falls further away from the New Agey, Clannadish type stuff they can do on occasion...

I think I just gave myself a hernia trying not to laugh at this Firefly fic (shockingly enough, there's someone else in the Mac lab). Just...go read it. It's hilarious.

....Um. I'm TOTALLY working hard this afternoon. Getting a lot of work done. Yep. that's me.

(Hey, I managed to clean out my electronic inbox for the Review, since I would usually work one of my hours this morning. And I have a thesis for my history paper. That's something!)

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In other news, winter blew in. Well, okay, very cold and damp autumn. But the heat is definitely not on in my apartment, and it's definitely cold there. It's somewhat better in the library, though, which is nice.

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Finally, happy belated birthday to tarzanic! I have totally fallen behind on the birthdays, so I'm sorry to everyone I missed. :(