The 35th Precinct

Two hundred and eighty-four words today. It's not a grand total, but it's a total, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

I'm sitting in cozy pajama pants and noshing chocolate mini pretzels.

And Roomie's being a hypocritical dick. Quelle surprise. He's allowed to thunder downstairs and fill my groggy morning moments with stories of doom, gloom, and dire predictions, but oh, heaven forfend I mention the possibility of a power failure when temperatures are expected to plummet to minus one. Then he gets to huff and roll his bulging eyes and give me the bitchface for clearly being paranoid. Whatever.

Congrats to the Rammgents for winning the Revolver Golden God Award for Best Live Act. Roomie voted for them(I would have done if we weren't using the same IP), but I didn't think they would win simply because I expected the larger fanbases of the other nominees to swamp the Rammfen presence by sheer numbers. Well done, Rammfen.

Oh, my God, but weathermen turn me into Ren Hoek, foaming at the mouth and screaming obscenities at the window until I burst the blood vessels in my eyes. They waffle more than politicians. When I went to bed, the forecast for today was a light drizzle. This morning, it was for cloudiness. By four, it was for thunderstorms early. An hour ago, it said the skies would be clear after seven.

At seven-thirty, there was a low rumble of thunder.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you incompetent, overpaid knobs. Maybe you ought to use that billion-dollar Doppler radar system you're always boasting about in those commercials touting your l33t weather-preparedness prowess. I don't understand how you smug, preening assgoblins can be paid eighty-thousand dollars a year to be so consistently wrong.


ETA: And now I regret reading the comments to this article about Lady Gaga apologizing for calling Madonna comparisons retarded.

One day, I will learn.

As a native Floridian, I have seen many thunderstorms, but the one that came to call at half-past eleven last night was a rare breed, indeed. Lightning struck the street near our house three times in ten minutes. Fortunately, because of prior experience in which lightning has burnt down my house and destroyed many of my cherished electronics, I am a complete paranoiac who unplugs everything at the first flash, and so nothing was damaged. It did kill the power for a minute, and I sat in the hallway and listened to "BOOMPOW! BOOMPOW! BOOMPOW!" I strongly suspect that if anything had been plugged in, it would have been destroyed, high-caliber surge protectors notwithstanding. I screamed like a little girl and started hyperventilating after the second roaring strike, and my startle reflex went into overdrive. I never want to do that ever again.

The locals on the town message board are claiming that a tornado skirted us last night, but I'm quite dubious of the claim, as I have seen no evidence of even minor wind damage--no downed limbs or felled saplings or loose siding. I suspect it was just a very fierce, dangerous squall. One of the purported perks of living on the outskirts of modern civilization was to escape such violent weather. So much for that idea.

( AMC's The Killing Thoughts and Early Predictions--MAJOR SPOILERS )

Roomie and I are going to see Up tomorrow, and in preparation for the anticipated Pixar excellence, we watched Ratatouille. I love that movie to bits and pieces, and it's some of the most loving, lushest animation I've ever seen. I want to grab the fuckdrizzles responsible for the globular, inhuman monstrosity that is Winnie the Pooh in his "modern" incarnation and shove their faces against the television screen while screaming, "See? See? It is possible to create warm, vivid animation with a computer if you're not a lazy tool too busy surfing the Internet for underage kiddie fiddler porn to do your job." Pooh should not look like he's been assimilated by his own damn honey.

Other than that, things are quiet. The weather is, of course, being a miserable ass pickle. After weeks of bad weather, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel when they predicted that Friday would only have an isolated chance of thunderstorms. Oh, happy day! A movie, sunshine, and the opportunity to start my papers. Glorious. I'm tired of sitting in the middle of the living room with a shirt over my head, jumping at every crash. Thunderstorms are hell on the CP startle reflex, and each involuntary jump and accompanying adrenaline spike ratchets up the misery.

Then, this evening, the pundits declare that they were just kidding, so sorry, LOL, have some scatted and severe thunderstorms. But don't worry; Saturday will be gorgeous. You know, when you're chained to the computer in the chafing throes of responsibility.

It was at that point that I balled up my spastic, froggy fists, and screamed, "TIMMMM-MMMAY!"

You sniveling, smirking, primping, congenitally wrong, useless, maddening cocksnots!

Sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown running headlong at Lucy's proffered football.

Good grief.

Et Tu XII is nearly finished, but I'm not going to predict a posting date because the weather here is gearing up for a thunderstorm bonanza for most of the week. That means my writing computer will spend a great deal of time unplugged and dreaming little circuit board dreams of a vacation in Silicone Valley. I will likely have my nose buried in a book while lightning dickwhips the power grid and the wind coaxes the thin pine trees to take headers into utility poles. At least I'll have many books from which to choose, thanks to the book-buying mania I've recently contracted.

I've started watching Hill Street Blues. It's hilariously dated, with hulking typewriters and terrifying mod squad fashion sense, and its depiction of gang culture sometimes borders on the cartoonish, with each gang being a walking ethnic stereotype, but I'll give it credit for not shying away from the fact that police officers can be bigots and racists. It's clear that while Renko is a gregarious, fun-loving guy, he's also a racist who often calls the residents of the predominantly black and Latino ghetto "animals". He's neither a Dudley Do-Right nor a slavering, sieg-heiling, jackbooted villain. He's both, and the dichotomous nature of his personality makes for fascinating television even if the acting is occasionally shrill.

The show also does a good job of acknowledging that officers are affected by what happens on the job. Renko and his partner are shot in the pilot, and both of them suffer from pronounced PTSD. Renko's partner is nearly paralyzed with fear the first time he has to chase an armed suspect after returning to duty, and when Renko, who stubbornly refuses to admit he's afraid, turns on the lights in the basement to look for the suspect, his partner snaps and begins to beat him with his fists, screaming, "You got me killed! You killed me! You killed me!" He even draws his baton on Renko. Later, Renko breaks down in an interrogation room and cries. It's a trifle melodramatic, but it's leagues better than the business-as-usual Teflon psyches of modern TV cops(Yes, I'm looking at you CSI:NY, looking so hard that my eyeballs are in danger of rupturing and oozing down my face like broken yolks).

If you want a laugh, clap your eyes on a young David Caruso as Johnny, the leader of the Shamrocks, an Irish gang. He looks like a gloriously stoned Willy Wonka. And the accent, oh, Lord, the accent. It's hysterical, and I'd bet my wheelchair that David Caruso wishes someone had burned the master prints when the season ended.

It's not as good as I remembered it to be, but modern crime dramas could still learn a few things about psychological realism and continuity from it.

There's no finer way to spend a Monday afternoon and evening than to listen to tornado sirens blare. Until recently, I didn't know my city had tornado sirens, and really, whoever designed them should be flogged with a whole-wheat knout because they sound like wind chimes, not heralds of whirling death. If I hadn't seen the tornado warning plastered in the upper-right corner of my TV screen, I would've thought that unfamiliar noise was nothing more than my neighbor's wind chimes. Perhaps the members of the Department of Public Safety should retool their sirens so that they aren't mistaken for meditation and sleep aids. Just a thought.

No tornadoes touched down in my academic ghetto, thank God, but one did wreak havoc in nearby Capitola. This spring has seen two tornadoes in my county in ten days. Prior to this spate of severe weather, Tallahassee hadn't seen a tornado since 1954. It makes me uneasy. There are no storm cellars in Florida, and I don't relish the thought of dying beneath two stories of rubble and my thunder-footed upstairs neighbor's bloated corpse.

I don't know what was creepier: the sirens or the disembodied voice that floated from them once the storm had passed. "All clear. All clear. The Department of Public Safety has issued an all-clear." It reminded me of "The Regulators" and their innocuous and terrible vans.

I'd be happier if I never experienced that again, please and thank you.

As for today, I'm going to eat fried chicken and Doritos and chocolate eggs and write fic. Et Tu is blossoming, and I want to make hay while the weather permits. And Sam Flack and "C Is for Confession" also needs finishing, and then I need to get Dean out of the shower before he prunes like the Sunsweet mascot...

And, and, and. But life is good with so many hamsters on the wheel, you know?

I might not be able to watch Criminal Minds or CSI:NY tomorrow because the weather gods are promising a severe weather bonanza. Woe. I was looking forward to watching that pompous nuntz Rossi engage in a bout of self-flagellation because his enormous ego cost someone their life. Rossi's had a God complex for a long damn time, as evinced by his utter--and undeserved, in my opinion--contempt for the psychic who was trying to give a distraught mother a bit of hope in last week's offering. I'm glad it will be coming back to bite him in the ass, though I'm sorry for the innocent victim of his blinkered meism.

At least today was good. I finally went on my date with Jason Vorhees.

Look, Friday the 13th is what it is. It's not high art. It's not even trash art. It's the simple, brutal catharsis of watching entitled, foolhardy assholes get theirs courtesy of the monstrous disenfranchised. Everyone in these movies is either a blank slate, the dangerous, faceless unknown(Jason) or a stereotypical asshole(the victims). The writers don't intend to portray the victims as assholes, of course; they'd have us relate to them as Katie and Johnny Everyman, but since they're basing their everyman on the rich, privileged, prep school dickheads that infest Beverly Hills with the febrile tenacity of pubic lice, it seldom works. Everyman comes across as an obnoxious tool, and so Jason becomes not an evil monster, but an arbiter of cosmic and karmic justice and guardian of the status quo. Honestly, groups such as the PTC and Association for the Preservation of the American Family should love Jason because he puts a quick and decisive end to all that nasty drug abuse and iniquitous premarital sex. He's the silent muscle behind the Moral Majority movement.

I like Jason. He's not a disfigured, misunderstood woobie. He's a killing machine(and if those wheelchairs stacked in his mineshaft of nefarious didoes were any indication, an equal opportunity one, at that. Thanks, Jason. Though I do have to wonder just how many limpers think it would be really groovy to go camping in the sling-seat, ass-chafing, aluminum cheapo chair they snagged at Rite-Aid for $700.), but he's the lesser of two evils(in a fictional context, put down the cudgels, armchair psycholanalysts)because he doesn't present himself as anything but what he is. He doesn't pretend to be socially acceptable or a good guy. Jason doesn't give a fiddler's fart for such pretenses. You're fucking and smoking doob on his property, and he's going to part your hair with whatever's handy. The end. It's black and white and refreshingly unambiguous. It's cinematic comfort food, and I gobbled it up.

( Friday the 13th(2009)--SPOILERS )

There I was, ready to do my German exercises for the day. On a whim, I turn on the Weather Channel to see if there is a small shower in the area to explain the distant rumbles of thunder. What to my wondering eyes should appear but a giant blob of red death bearing down on us and a helpful crawl informing me that this storm features hail, multiple cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and winds of 60MPH.

Well, isn't that special?

So Roomie and I pull every plug in the house, batten down the hatches, and take refuge in the windowless bathroom. The appointed hour for the storm's arrival, 7:30, comes and goes with nary a whimper. 7:45, 8:00, nothing, not even a blown twig.

At 8:05, Roomie darts from the shelter of the bathroom to investigate. A look outside shows children playing on the greens and adults taking leisurely strolls around the complex. Befuddled by their lack of concern about death from above, Roomie plugs in the boob tube and turns to the Weather Channel, where there is...

Nothing. The monster storm has evaporated into nothingness, a red menace reduced to an ever-dwindling green blotch of tranquil rain. My city's bizarre meteorological biodome has spared us from a direct hit again. Thank heavens.

However, the hour spent in the cramped porcelain chapel of the great god, Bog, snuffed my enthusiasm for learning, and I spent the rest of the night watching WWE Raw in a butthurt torpor because Roomie was playing Julius Caesar with the television remote.

I am determined to make headway today, however, but how much progress I make will be determined by two factors: the weather, which currently promises nothing but woe until next goddamned Tuesday, and my progress on my spn_summergen fic. The latter is in the late stages, but with a scant nine days before the hour of none, time is running out.


For those HPfen on my list in search of reading material, might I suggest Kiss of Sick by death_ofme? Despite its unappealing, chunky monkey title, it's a fast, compelling read with vivid imagery, rich, human characterization(Molly and Ginny are particularly well-rendered, even if the former makes only a brief appearance), and an interesting, original plot that raises several questions about the fluid ethics of survival and the equally tenebrous and dubious morality adopted by those desperate to endure. Best of all, it does this without bludgeoning the reader about the head with the skull-shattering knout of authorial agenda. The final scene is especially potent, so potent that I had nightmares after reading it and am still turning several scenes over in my mind. And not the smutty ones, either.

I'm still wondering why brilliant, feisty Hermione would be so reckless and dumb as to, well, you'll see, but that's a minor quibble.

Be advised that the story is a horror story, and as such contains descriptions of violence and the ravages of epidemic disease. It is SS/HG AU, with explicit sex, not all of it--in fact, very little of it--of the vibrator-revving persuasion. It's consensual, but...I can't say anything more without spoiling the story. Just heed the warnings in the header.

The link provided is to Part 2/2; I'd hoped there was a link to Part 1/2 embedded in Part 2, but alas. Not to worry; Part 1 can be found in the previous entry.

Zero words managed on History Lessons III, but I did manage to discuss the lameness of Horatio Caine with faylinn_drake. I was shocked when she told me that H was not only seen wearing a lab coat in last night's episode, but was processing evidence. He hasn't deigned to do his job since S2. Then she told me that the evidence in question pertained to his illegitimate spawn, and everything made sense. Horatio only dirties himself with work when he's personally invested, and he's certainly no stranger to bending or flouting the morality he claims to uphold.

Murder is wrong, and vengeance killing even more so, or so he tells the despicable baddies he catches, but it's perfectly all right for him to traipse off to Brazil and kill his wife's murderer because human justice was insufficient. It's also acceptable to involve her brother, who is his subordinate. After all, he's Horatio Caine and thus entitled to commit murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The rules are for other people. Therefore, it surprises me not at all that he would handle evidence in which he has a direct stake, because in H World, there is no such thing as conflict of interest, and no judge is going to question the validity of evidence processed by a suspect's father. Because H is just that damn holy.

I don't blame H for going to Brazil and killing Riaz, by the by. That is probably the most human reaction he's ever had, but I do blame him for the hypocrisy. You can't spend your life condemning and incarcerating those who kill and then kill yourself. Not for vengeance.

If Horatio had been a proponent of an eye for an eye, on the other hand, I would've cheered him on because that's consistent and true to his established moral compass. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I never had any qualms with what Rebecca did to Lessing; she never hid the blood on her teeth. But when it comes to Horatio, he can't pick and choose when to believe in the law. He either believes that the justice provided by law is all that should be attained, or he must grant others the right to pursue justice beyond that provided by the courts. He can't hold the sword by both ends and not be cut. Not if the show wants him to be seen as the Great Hero and conscience of Miami.

And did I just spend a post pontificating on Horatio Caine? Dear Lord.

Predictably, the weather gods have decided to have an orgy now that new episodes of my favorite shows are slated to air, so I might be scarce for the rest of the week. Hopefully, though, there'll be a window like today's wherein I might wax poetic on various and sundry brain scraps that I've unearthed during my daily mooning sessions.

No 'Net toobing for me last night because we were getting some much-needed rain. I spent the evening playing Monopoly, where I became a slumlord and spent my free time visiting jail for conjugal visits with Flack and Tommy Dowd. I bought the tenement towns and the utilities. Roomie bought the swanky penthouse neighborhoods.

I beat him by $500 bucks. Stripmining the poor and downtrodden is more profitable than pandering to the whiny rich. Monopoly: Upholding my darkest surmises since 1936.

My Dannyfic is finally, finally nearing completion. I gave up trying to nudge him in a specific direction and just let him ramble while I followed behind with a pencil, pad of paper, and bunny treats. I hope to have him floofed and posted by next Wednesday as a sendoff for CSI:NY for 2007.

I should stop reading DeadlineHollywoodDaily. It gives me a headache. For individuals charged with the task of creating realistic people from whole cloth, writers are incredibly obtuse. Some are delusional. They honestly believe that they can broker individual deals with the networks and production companies and thereby splinter Big Media's united front.

Writers really are fools and starry-eyed idealists. Big Media has every tactical advantage and no reason to negotiate individual deals. All they have to is wait 4 more weeks, and the already-flagging resolve of the WGA will evaporate. This latest "plan" is smoke and mirrors and a whole lot of wishful thinking on the part of people who can't understand why they're not getting the Hollywood ending.