The 35th Precinct

I need to make some serious mileage on ficcing, but the weather has been a pissy bitch today, so who knows how much I'll accomplish?

I've been tempted to delete half my flist for rampant inability to use an LJ-cut for stupid memes or giant pictures that mangle my layout. I don't mind reading long posts about promotions, angst, the fantastic sex you had last night, or your dog, and I don't care if those have no cuts. But I don't give to shits about the latest questionnaire meme making the rounds, and I refuse to scroll through seventy-five versions of the same inane, TMI questions. You can leave them uncut as is your won't, but if you disappear from my flist, that's why. Also, if you cannot, after multiple years on LJ, manage LJ-cuts or links, you may disappear as well. Previewing a post is your friend. This isn't a threat because God knows I have as much Internet clout as a fart shared between pipes, but I've got a bug up my ass about this, and it'll have to work itself out.

I'm only mentioning this because some folks get stroppy about being defriended without a heads-up, and most of the folks on my flist are safe. On the off chance you do meet the road, no fear. My posts are public, even the fic, so you won't miss much anyway.

If anyone wants to defriend me, be my guest. Just don't tell me. I don't need a running tally of people on the Internet who think I suck.

I've just finished my lunch/dinner of wings and cheese fries and am deciding which of my muses to obey-the one clamoring for me to start Part X of Danse Macabre, or the one reminding me that my Supernatural From the Ashes challenge submission is due on the 15th. As much as I want to heed the voice of Flack, I think I should put my nose to the grindstone on the latter in case the weather goes to hell and prevents use of electronics for a few days.

Speaking of weather, on Thursday, the meteorological seers swore that it would rain and thunder and howl all day, bringing lightning and tornado watches. So Roomie and I gathered up books and games and battened down the hatches. When there was still no rain by 2pm, we turned on TVs and booted computers and carried on as usual. Georgia, an hour to the north of us, got hammered all day. At 10pm, we still had no rain.

At 11pm, a weatherwoman who sounded positively orgasmic about the impending disaster interrupted coverage of the tornadoes in Enterprise, Alabama to tell us that Mitchell County, Georgia was getting pounded with tornadoes, and that we were next. Yeeehaw! She was giddy, as though it were an amusement-park ride and not a vortex of rumbling death that could vaporize a high school.

Before I go any further, I'd like to ask why weatherpeople and civil authorities, et al, waste precious airtime and bandwidth dispensing useless advice, most notably the admonition to stay close to the radio in case we needed to seek shelter.

...

If the weather is so bad as to necessitate warnings to stick our heads between our knees and kiss our asses goodbye, we're not going to be listening to weather reports; everything we have will be unplugged, and we will be in the windowless bathroom.

Secondly, if a powerful F3 tornado comes through, where, pray tell, are we to hide? This isn't Oklahoma, where fallout cellars are plentiful and there is only one anemic tree per one hundred miles. This is Florida, where monstrous oak and pine trees abound. If one of those venerable old men topple, nothing is going to hold it up, and as Enterprise, Alabama proves, not even a high school will save you. The best we could've done had a tornado touched down was close the bathroom door, huddle in the shower, and pray. As long-time residents of the area, the weather gurus should know this.

Anyway, at 11:30pm, we headed into the bathroom and closed the door, and the Roomie set up the Monopoly board. I became the slumlord of Baltic and Orient Avenues, as well as a railroad and utilities magnate.

At 12:45, we had a brief, fierce squall that resulted in...three thunderclaps and the briefest flicker in the power grid. That's it. Georgia gets clobbered, and Tallahassee gets...wet. Tallahassee's super storm-blunting powers strike again, and I am rethinking my interest in Albany, Georgia as a possible homestead. The money I'd save in taxes wouldn't mean much if a tornado flattened my dream home months after I moved in. I'm going to poke around here more.


On the fandom front, CBS has reshuffled their schedule, and a new episode of CSI:NY will air on March 21st. I can only guess that the suits were worried that five weeks would give viewers ample time to find another show they liked better, and they should be worried. Their insistence on shoving D/L in viewers' faces at every opportunity-even to the detriment of all else-is making a lot of the die-hards restless, and even some D/Lers have complained that the romance has been badly done. When the target audience for which you have created this embarrassing subplot is unsatisfied, there can be no doubt that it is seriously flawed.

My bouncing baby board is suffering from a distinct failure to thrive after a good start. 14 people signed up, but only four have posted more than once. If it hasn't perked up by season's end, I'm just going to cut my losses, say I tried, and suffer through TalkCSI's badly-spelled, nonsensical cesspool of fucking stupid.

A first pimp for Part IX of Danse Macabre.

While the consensus on S1 of Monk has been positive, it wasn't the slavering, shameless approbation for which I had hoped, so it's down to S1 of Numb3rs or S3 of X-Files as this month's entertainment. This assumes, of course, that my wheelchair wheel doesn't snap off before the wheelchair tinkerer arrives on the 5th and send me tumbling down an embankment, breaking bones and dislodging teeth.

Yesterday and today featured stupendous thunderstorms, so I've become intimately familiar with the subtle nuances of my bathroom, from the smell to the mildew pattern in the grout. Tomorrow currently promises a reprieve, but I am dubious; nine times out of ten, the dancing weather monkey emerges from his tree at two o'clock in the morning to scream and bare his teeth and fling a steaming pile of meteorological scat at me before showing his ass and scampering to the safety of his tree again. Hairy, raisin-testicled bastard.

I did, however, manage to kick off Part III of my lyric_ficathon fic, and it stands at 1,162 words.

I wrote a measly 410 words of Flack/Stanhope. I would have done substantially more, but no sooner did I get home from class than I was besieged by a monstrous thunderstorm, complete with apocalyptic skies, sheeting rain, and alarming cannonades of thunder. Amazingly, the power stayed on, and I wound up reading eighty pages of East of Eden in the bathroom.

Toilet literature, it ain't. Thirteen chapters in, and there is scant plot to be seen, though I am awash in character narratives of varying degrees of interest. Cathy Trask nee Amesbury nee Ames is a melodramatic villain of the first water, and Adam Trask, her besotted husband, is a bumbling boob of impressive stripe. I would say that such rampant fuckwittery has no parallel in the real world, but sadly, I know better. Chalk it up to my Internet education.

The professor was most pleased with my pictorial, a fact which fills me with no little glee. As of today, there are three weeks, a paper, and a final remaining in the course, and then, I will be free of all academic fetters for nine glorious weeks. I plan to fic, watch DVDs, and see movies. I wanted to see X3 on Monday, but then the Roomie reminded me that Monday was Memorial Day, and ultimate Gimp Empowerment movie or not, I have no desire to be caught in the crushing tide of humanity likely to be wandering the malls that day. I'll just wait until Wednesday.

Tomorrow, I hope to put the keystrokes to the Flack/Stanhope vignette and if not finish it, then get one toe over the finish line.

I am currently high as a kite on Dayquil. Everything has taken on a surreal quality, and I find myself blinking at the text of my Word document in moonstricken fascination. Roomie has made me soup and brought me a bottle of orange juice, and I am sipping both in an attempt to beat back the relentless, Snotian hordes that have infested my nasal passages and made my ears throb with pressure. As soon as I post this entry, I'm going offline so that he can treat himself to a pizza.

Yesterday, the weather threw us a curveball. The rain was supposed to abate by 6pm, but it didn't. In fact, it got worse. Once again, the overpaid weather pundits got it catastrophically wrong. I got on the bus just in time for the deluge to start and was treated to the sight of lightning striking the highway in front of us. Not to mention the dime-sized hail. Roomie and I had to run through the sheeting rain and thunderclaps to get home, and I wound up cowering underneath three blankets to get warm again.

I only managed 300 words last night before my get-up-and-go got up and went, and so I'm doing my best to make up ground today. Lord knows if it will make any sense in the morning, but it feels good to be splashing in the mud and getting it between my splayed, purple toes, so I'm going to do it for as long as I can before the Dayquil stupor overwhelms me completely.

I am very ready for the Atlantic to take its Tums. No sooner does a hurricane peter out than another forms and churns across the ocean. There is no respite, no lull, just one more, and one more, and one more in a merry retinue of howling wind. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were in a pageant of sorts, each trying to outo the other in terms of ferocity. The baton-twirling must be a bitch.

My linguistics homework is half-done. I might do another problem tonight, but like as not, I'll fic and finish reading Dracula today and finish the phrase tree constructions and the lexicons tomorrow before Raw and CSI: Miami come on. Right now, I'm sitting in a t-shirt and socks, listening to a documentary on professional wrestling and whetting the grindstone for my daily writer's workout.

For those of you who have been so patiently waiting for progress on SLS, fear not. I'm still very interested in the doings of Severus Snape and the machinations of Lucius and Umbridge and Dumbles, oh, my. I just needed a breather from the unrelenting grimness and a chance to explore other HP characters and other fandoms. My shingle is still firmly entrenched in HP fandom, and I've no intention of leaving the fic to swing in the wind.

The fish for dinner is thawing on the counter, and the Emmys are scant hours hence. I usually ignore them, but how can I pass up the chance to see Gary Dourdan and Beyonce singing "Movin on Up"?

Today, I have achieved bupkus because I was lazy. It was easier to sit and read than to engage in productive activity, so I did. I started Danse Macabre for the fourth time. For those who've not read it, I highly recommend it. Annoying and excessive self-reference aside, King gives a wonderful insight into the underpinning psychology of the horror genre as seen in radio, television, movies, and books. Unfortunately, it only covers 1950 to 1980, the year it was first published, and I wish he'd write another for 1981 to the present. It would be interesting to see if he's noticed the same trends and tropes I have, or if I've just been smoking some really funky celluloid.

The weather has not helped my ficcing productivity. Last night, before I went to bed, the forecast promised evening thunderstorms for today. Evening-as in after noon, at least. When does it start raining? Eleven-thirty in the morning. I am awakened, in fact, by a thunderclap. Good morning, indeed. When does it stop? Seven o'clock. In other words, it was a complete reversal of the forecast. Clearly, their beloved Doppler radar needs a visit from the Maytag man.

When not hunkered in the bathroom, reading Danse Macabre in the flickering light of a halogen bulb on its last legs, I was wading through the latest spoogefest on I Wank. A wankee, like so many before her, has made the mistake of storming the castle in a vain attempt to defend her sullied honor. Among her list of excuses for her wankery were OCD, posting under the influence of marijuana, and a father with cancer. As one might imagine, none of these tried and true Internet crutches held up, and the resultant wankfest is at 850 comments and counting.

When will people learn that wading into a wank to combat the accusation of fappage only adds to the splooge? Sure when I was a fandom rookie, I made the mistake of pulling on the military hipwaders and getting my Tireless Rebutter on, but over time, I learned that the best offense was none at all and stopped replying in the communities. I did wank here in my journal, but LJ is like your bathroom, in my opinion, and if you can't tweak your nipples and sniff your pits in your bathroom, where can you?

If you say, "I don't care," once, I believe it. If you have to say it twice, I know you for a liar.

Besides, if the woman would stop replying, the mock monkeys would wander in search of fresher jizz...

In non-Internet news, Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat is a blast. Last night, I played until my shoulders throbbed, and though I know it's a bad idea, the compulsion to play tonight is strong. I want to tap the bongos and swing through the trees with the greatest of ease, collecting bananas and watching frogs explode.

If I'm smart, I'll watch Alone in the Dark instead. The last thing I need is a blown rotator cup.

Very little of fandom note today. I have been reading HBP aloud to the roomie, and we are now at Chapter Eighteen. While I am still not amused by either the Scene That Shall Not Be Discussed or Vamp!Ginny, I love the myriad shades of grey that have suddenly entered Harry's world. He's still an arrogant, entitled tool convinced of his own inveterate rightness, but then, so is his mentor, and Harry, at least, is beginning to question, however briefly and lightly, the moral ambiguities and rotten underpinnings of the wizarding world.

Good boy, Harry. Good boy. You're still a wanker, albeit a more complex one. Have a biscuit.

In weather news, Tropical Storm Franklin is eating his maritime Wheaties in the Carribean. Oh, joy. Not only that, but there is also another tropical wave brewing in the Bay of Campeche. Tropical Storm Goyle, mayhap? The Atlantic is the Devil's Tetley tea, and it should be drained and fashioned into another country-Speedbump or Sacrificial Lamb to the Wind God Or Eat Me, Celestial Flatulence. At this point, I think the insurance companies would go for it. It might inconvenience the airlines, this new overland route to England, but fuck 'em. Their food sucks anyway.

For all of those who wished me well during my fleeting exodus from my home, and for those of you who were simply hoping to bear witness to an Internet death, I thank you. I have returned from Jacksonville to find my home intact, for which I am most relieved. I've spent the better part of two days conjuring up doomsday scenarios, each more deadly and woeful than the last. I was sure the apartment would be flooded, that I would find myself axle-deep in bilge and sewage from vomiting, overtaxed sewers, but the floors were blessedly dry. Nor did my other favorite scenario-that of the falling trees of death-come to pass. I did, however, return home to find that I'd forgotten to flush the toilet before I left on Saturday.

Oops.

My exile wasn't that bad. I was fed and warm, and though the futon wasn't Serta standard, it beat the socks off the shelter floor. The roomie's dad bought soup and sandwiches, and yesterday, he took us to St. Augustine for a stroll around St. George Street. St George is very kitsch and panders to the tourists, but the architecture is Spanish Colonial and absolutely gorgeous, and Kilwin's has the best handmade fudge and chocolate. I bought white chocolate in the shape of golf balls, and it is so good. I'm down to two and a half balls, and I want to make them last.

For what it's worth, the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind and Flagler College are the bases for D.A.I.M.S. The latter has a divine Common Room, and had I realized how ornate it was, I would have used it for the D.A.I.M.S Common Room, but alas, that dubious honor goes to the cripple ranch so cleverly masquerading as a school.

Anyway, I'm home, at least until Tropical Depression Five, as it is so ominously called, picks a swath of destruction and floors it. Boy, does it feel good to be able to roll around sans pants and poop in my own toilet. Holding it in for three days because the bathrooms are inaccessible and preclude proper wiping was a drag, and I don't recommend it.

That was TMI with a capital T, wasn't it?

Off for tea and men in spandex tights, oil, and homoerotic poses.

Farewell, jupiter_lament, from the flist.

Dear Florida Meteorologists,

While I know it is your job to keep viewers informed of weather that may reduce their home to a sunken mud flat, you have lost all sense of decorum, perspective, and reality with today's forecast. If the tropical depression is churning toward Louisiana, why do you see fit to natter about it in a forecast for Tallahassee? If the churning harbinger of God's wrath isn't coming for me, I don't want to know it exists. This holds doubly true for storms that haven't even organized yet. Do you know what a tropical wave is? It's a breeze. Stop trying to whip viewrs into frothing hysteria with dire threats of a dreaded light wind. It's idiotic, unbecoming and dangerous. If you predict calamity every time the wind shifts, people will stop listening. Use discretion, please.

In short, I don't want to hear about it every time a bean farmer farts in Honduras. Save the bug-eyed histrionics for when it really counts. I and my ulcers will thank you.

La Guera

It's the Fourth of July, which means that my day has been punctuated by the dulcet sounds of screaming children and celebratory fireworks. Actually, the latter have been a constant for the last four days, and I find that strange because the majority of my neighbors are foreign grad students. There's no law that says they can't celebrate right along with the grotty, illiterate Americans, of course, but I wonder why they'd want to. Most of them intend to get their Masters or doctorate and return home, so there's no need to feign camaderie or patriotism if they don't feel it just to avoid the ignorant troglodytes who scream, "Love it or leave it!" at the drop of a hat. And if they are moved by a rush of patriotism, why?

Maybe it's just the fireworks and the dazzling starbursts of the Catherine's Wheels that paint the night sky. Sometimes you don't need an excuse or a reason to have a good time.