Please comment with one word. (Scrabble rules do not apply - the word can be a person, place, or slang.)

I will write a drabble-ish length reply. It might be fic, it might be original, it might be memory, might be, I don't know, a definition? A recipe? A made-up word origin?

I promised last night that I would make art every chance I get and am having a bit of a hard time getting started when hulu is right there with ten thousand shows I don't need to watch.

Help? :)

(p.s. if you want to do this exercise too, I promise to give you a word!)

Ah, Portland, where it's totally normal that businessmen drop everything to go on a bike ride in the middle of the day, because hey, Friday! and not raining! and really, that's what you do. (Sadly, that's not what I do, because I work for a corporate monolith with East Coast "work ethic" kind of values, so I'm the one in the office being told to do business dealings with someone while the call keeps dropping out because they are on a bike ride.)

I thought I would share with you a selection of the varied free Portland activities I have to choose from this weekend, aside from all the ordinary things like the Portland Marathon and the Greek Festival and Ralph Nader giving a talk at Powell's:

+ For the business gentleman I was calling all afternoon: A community appreciation of the art and craft of bicycling. Very Portland.
+ A Gathering on Economic and Ecological Crises, which should be a rollicking good time for all.
+ Cthulucon: 2009. Come for the cosmic horror, stay for the unnameable fear! CTHULUCON!
+ The Cheesefest. Actual cheese.
+ Soon followed by Portland Baconfest 2009, where our vegan-friendly city spends a whole day explaining how bacon is not at all the same thing as meat and does not count. I am told it is sponsored by something called The Meat Show.

I get my what's happening info from Around the Sun Blog, Portland on the Cheap and Dave Knows: Portland. (The other place Dave knows, FYI, is Elko, Nevada.) I then feel happy to live in such a quirky place, before forgetting all about these events and spending my weekend doing remedial science fiction reading (DUNE for the first time, currently) while snuggled between boy and dog. You know it's bad when your hermit father practically begs you to go clubbing for 80s video music night while you're saying I got up at five a.m. every day this week and have been on conference calls all day and Dad, seriously, can't I JUST STAY HOME AND READ DUNE IN THE BATHTUB FOR THE THIRD FRIDAY IN A ROW WITHOUT BEING CONSIGNED TO A LIFE AS A TOTAL SHUT-IN!?

In other news, I'm a total shut-in.

Also, I have watched Glee seven thousand times. FYI: no, there's no fanfic coming (canon is still not a defense for song lyrics in fanfic!) and I am THOROUGHLY EMBARRASSED by how I really kind of can't wait until somebody makes a fanvid to Taylor Swift's "Fifteen." Also, no 'ship, really, because the show is so perfect and they're kids and I'm loving the teen pathos, and Rachel's adorable Love Of Finn is really so adorable, but, you know, he should probably be that first crush or first boyfriend she never totally gets over but doesn't actually be with forever omg because, god love him, he's kind of a dope. BUT I LOVE HIM. Why do I pretend I won't write fanfic about things and that I won't use song lyrics as a means of plot advancement? AUGHHHH.

Finally, finally saw "Glee" on Hulu!

It is, as everyone has said, endlessly delightful. The awesome football players! Every time Mercedes Jones opens her mouth! The relentlessly brilliant Jane Lynch as the cheerleading coach! Love. Will is adorably earnest. The girl who plays Rachel reminds me an awful lot of Paula Marshall, for reasons unknown. And that teacher from the early seasons of Boston Public back on a school show, even if not a teacher! Win!

Now I have to unbury my brain from the Glee awesomeness and try to figure out what I was doing before I spent two hours sitting on the floor watching a new show...

I remember college, and planning parties and events, and that's probably why, whenever I feel a prolonged sense of stress-lag, I wonder "Shouldn't the DJ be here by now? And where are all the raver kids?"

I'm covering two additional regions besides mine this week and part of next, which has involved getting to work at 6:30 and being late on everything throughout the day. Not having any money until my next paycheck involves taking the train, and not driving to work, which I would normally do to console myself for early morning overtime. I really actually enjoy the rush of extra work and deadlines and a little bit of crazy, though I would prefer it if there were a few more "Thanks for doing this so quickly! You rock!" emails, instead of the "Where is this other thing!?!??" and "How did you not guess I would want this entire spreadsheet in yellow!?"

A man in my office who is slated to make -- literally -- ten times what I make this year told me yesterday that I make "good money," which made me feel like I'm a bit of a loser for not being able to buy groceries until paycheck (Friday! Friday!). But! Today he told me that he personally asked a bunch of people (who aren't, unfortunately, in charge of that) to pay me more. How nice of him! It's a shame it won't work. He said, "Look, when they downsize this other position [which is currently paid more than me], maybe you can get them to give part of that job to you and pay you a little more!" and I thought I shouldn't spoil the surprise that the company will actually give me that whole job on top of mine and not pay me any more, and then give me Stern Memos About Overtime Usage. But! I have a job!

I love my life. Love. I really do. Even when my job is a little over the top, everything is colored in these happy shades of me being so in love with my boyfriend. I am frustrated by my inability to make his life perfect, but he likes my cooking, so that's almost the same thing, right? And my apartment flooded a bit last weekend, but that gave me the perfect excuse to steam-clean my carpets and then -- this part was unrelated to the flooding -- reorganize all my yarn and fabric into small stacking clear plastic bins. HEAVEN.

I'm not sure if this post was supposed to mean something or not. I think I was going to apologize for being so unavailable this week? I come home at night and just pray there's a new Supernanny or something on Hulu, so that I can go "Well, at least I'm not screwing up ten children and then airing their dirty laundry on national TV," because that makes me feel better about things like being within a quarter-ream of the whole office being entirely out of paper (!!!!) before the supply order came today. Really, I'm just an approval-needy administrator with substandard personal financial planning, a wildly unnatural love of unnecessarily complex excel spreadsheets, and a bruised heel from going for a run in worn out flip-flops, and a bit of tired punchiness. And what's so bad about that?

It's the sort of unveiling that would happen in rented space in an elementary school cafeteria after-hours or something, but still:

mylittleredgirl.com exists!



Marvel at my cutting-edge use of stylesheets and outdated content! Admire the graphics mostly made on freeware that crashes all the time!

I got the domain eighteen months ago with big plans of having this great SITE and learning great CODE and writing lots to FILL the site with and maybe also having an ETSY store which isn't totally related BUT COULD BE... and then got a boyfriend, like you do, and left the website as a big mess of broken links.

So far, the only content on there are my old Stargate: Atlantis fics -- old, as in, 2005 and before. Newer fics and other fandoms will be added as long as my website motivation persists!

*preens*

If you find borked links or nonsensical gibbering, please let me know!

Holy crap.

Read The Little Dreams We Dream by icepixie.

It's Ivanova/Garibaldi, but really, don't let that stop you. Especially as the story progresses, this is honest and real and has these little witty bits of cleverness and then intensity and just awesome. There's some totally perfect Ivanova in here, and a lot of really wonderfully beautiful writing.

I know all of you have already read it, because you all hound miera_c for her fanfic offerings as much as I do if you have any love of Sparky what-so-ev-er, but this takes the cake.

I can't spell the name of this fic, but you must read it RIGHT NOW. Unless you are at work or at your grandmother's house. Not work/grandma safe.

This fic is miera_c at her finest -- team, a little bit of action and plot, deliciously tortured UST, and it all ends with a *ahem* bang as only she can write. Seriously. Everything I love about miera_c's writing is in this.

You have two choices.

1. Stop what you are doing right now and go read peanutbutterer's swficathon fic for meeeee, If it Ain't Broke. This will result in INSTANT LOLARITY. I adore the way peanutbutterer writes anything these two as funny, snarky friends-with-hope-of-more-maybe. Also, she's just a clever writer of cleverness, so there's that level of enjoyment, too. :)

2. Save it for a time when you are in DIRE NEED of immediate Sparky happiness, because I can pretty much guarantee that this fic will improve your day by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.

*note: If you are not a Stargate: Atlantis fan, you are exempt from this mandate.

Actually, do not read my fic which I just posted. Go read Decompression by anuna_81 instead, because it's a post-ep for "Hot Zone" and kind of the best fic ever, and then they done sex. Seriously.

Also, don't make the mistake that I made and assume that because it's posted by community moderator anr, it's written by community moderator anr, or you will end up sounding foolish.

Title: "Afterimage"
Author: Little Red
Rating: R
Challenge: swficathon: For cassievalentine, who wanted the aftermath of "The Real World," Elizabeth having issues, and John helping her work through them, friendship or more.
Spoilers: "The Real World" and "Common Ground." Set in the time between those two episodes.
Warnings: The vaguest of non-graphic, fantasy-only non-con sex.
Thanks to: anr, who not only assigned me episode-related fic because I love eet, but also beta'd!

( Afterimage )

So as far as Babylon 5 goes, I kind of got the whole Susan/Talia thing, but I didn't really get it.

So then I read icepixie's really clever "Five Things that Never Happened to Susan Ivanova", which is really quite light on the Susan/Talia, but somehow bit me in the brain. (DUDE. I so want to write a "Five Times Susan Was In The Psi Corps And Talia Was Also There" but that seems TOO SPECIFIC, and also like FIVE MAY NOT BE ENOUGH.)

Then, this vid:

( cut for embedding! )

... I GET IT NOW.

I still love Talia/Garibaldi tho, okay?

Because I kind of also have this plot bunny biting me in the face about how obviously Control would have chosen Garibaldi as the easy mark in the command staff for Talia to get close to since Susan hated her while he wanted in her pants, yes? And so that should happen? And then collossal angst perhaps and Psi Corps intrigue?

The infamous Globe columnist and professional Boston sports buzzkill has declared that it is "Just no fun beating these New York Yankees anymore."

I beg to differ, Dan Shaughnessy.

And by that I mean, 8-0 in the season series, GLEE effing E!!!

I'm pretty sure this doesn't make me a bad person.

Sims 3 release + early birthday pressie = EPIC BRB.

I have created a test house with computer generated sims. One is a gardener who would like to be an indie rocker. One is an "inappropriate" sim (this is represented by a beanie, so I think it is not the naughty sort of inappropriate) who wants to be an all-star, I think. The last one is a random shmoe with rather douchey choices in default clothing who wants to be an international SUPER SPY. I <3 that this is an option. I will pretend you all care for the duration of this paragraph.

Wheeeee!!

Usually I try very hard NOT TO DOES THEM, but I really like this one (via wildtiger7)!

Give me a character from any fandom, tv show, movie, book you know that I know and I will tell you:
a. My favorite thing about that character.
b. My least favorite thing about that character.
c. One person I would ship them with in their own verse.
d. One crossover ship for them I think would be neat.
e. One crossover universe for them I think would be even neater.
f. Their ship from hell.
g. Their song.
h. The title of their biography or autobiography.
i. The last bad dream they had.
j. How they're gonna shuffle off the mortal coil, if they haven't already.

Title: "Dead Souls"
Rating: PG-13
Category: Babylon 5, AU, Ivanova/Garibaldi, aaaaangst
Summary: Susan remains on the station after S4, and the ghosts remain at the banquet.
Spoilers: None, since it's AU, but I reference some S5 stuff. I haven't seen S5 in a bazillion years, so the references are almost certainly inaccurate.
Author's Note: The pairing and the idea are both icepixie's. I'm only posting it because of her, because the whole way through I was thinking "this is crap, and yet I cannot stop writing it." The dramatic title is thanks to Gogol, because Russia produces a lot of dramatic and angsty things.

( Dead Souls )

Title: "Huis Clos"
Author: Little Red
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sheppard and Weir get stuck in a transporter, and not on a good day.
Challenge: for spockette, who requested it in the comment-fic-request-meme. Mwah!
Author's Note: Holy crap. I don't think I've ever actually written the stuck in a transporter/shuttlecraft/puddle-jumper/Volkswagen/etc story before! I must have. Right? Er, well, now I have for sure.

( Huis Clos )

Title: "Simplifying Fractions"
Keywords: The Happy Voyager Project. Ocampalets. Harry Kim. If you're not aj, chances are you will not appreciate it.
Dedication: Good thing it's for aj then, with birthday gleeewishes!


( A lot of things had changed since Kes had children. )

Everyone usually sees these things before me, but sidhefaer has abridged the hell out of STAR TREK XI and you will LOVE IT.

*dies of laff*

I put off talking about my Star Trek reaction on here, because everyone was talking about theirs and I didn't see it on opening night so I'm sure it has all been said, but if anyone has possibly been pining away without my two cents:

( Little Red Goes To The Movies )

Um, yes. I am not doing

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

because, well, THAT'S FREAKING TERRIFYING. I admire the people who have thrown their names up for commenting, and I'm finding all the comments super fascinating from a psychological-experiment standpoint (are some of the "REALLY YOU ARE THE BEST!" comments coming because someone is paranoid that they will be found out? The people who go "OKAY, you really piss me off when you write so many damned fics about TRIBBLES" -- how long have they been stewing over that? Or were they just scrambling to think of something they could say anonymously that they can't normally say?).

But yes. I would really rather NOT know what people really-really-honestly think of me! I like critical feedback on individual stories, because very often the feeder-backer makes good points that I use in my next Exciting Life-Procrastination Fanfic Adventure. But if I ask generally, and someone anonymously says, "I can't stand it that you never write in the first person," then I will feel so horribly guilty for having INFLICTED my third-person writing on this person and will fret a lot about ever posting anything again, in case I will be RUINING someone's flist page! It would just be a mess.

So I'm posting this kind of as a public service announcement that the meme is out there and might be fun for people of stronger character than I, and a public confession that I am more weenier than you!!

For the record, anonymously or otherwise, I think y'all are awesome. :)

Kirk's choice in women continues to be deeply suspect, Janice Rand has the lamest swan song ever, and this is one hour of my life I will never get back.

( The Conscience of the King )

Poll #1401644 REALLY NOW.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

This is Ron Moore's favorite episode!?