Tea and Dragons

Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

phdelicious kindly provided the following:

Dreams--I enjoy them, as long as they're reasonably pleasant.  I have recurring landscapes in my head, including an entire mall that I revisit from time to time, and my sleeping brain also has an obsession with elevators (they rarely move in just one dimension) and, of all things, parking garages (no idea).  I have obsessive dreams about trying to get to a store to buy scones and clotted cream.  And nearly all my dreams have crowds of people I don't know.  

Writing--What I do for fun, as anyone who's reading this should know.  :P  One of my two-point-five talents.†  Actually, it's not writing in the strictest sense most of the time; it's typing.  My handwriting is awful; I deliberately cultivated sloppy writing as a child, in a reaction to my peers dotting all their "i"s with hearts, but even now writing clearly requires effort and my mother theorizes that I have a learning disability.☎  

Pets--The stuff of life.  I can't imagine growing up without them!  Five cats, two dogs, three rats, five guinea pigs, a gerbil, a turtle, and countless fish.  Never let your father name the gerbil--Alphonse, really?  And sometimes the nicknames are more fun than the formal ones--there was Squippy, Jack the Nipper☂, the Fluffbomb, the Calorie Pointer, Rupert, the dog we named after my great-aunt--and mustn't forget Mom's previous cat, whose given name was Saufie.  It stood for Smart Ass Under Foot.  Which she most definitely was. 

Fairytales--Practically infinite resources for the imaginative.  Even the most familiar and worn-out of tales can be refreshed into something new--take the concept and run with it, invert it, flip it inside out and dance with it.  Check out those from other cultures, and see what's the same and what's different.  Confound expectations.  Play.☛ 

Monuments--I am rarely impressed by them.  I saw Mount Rushmore and wondered why anyone had spent time on that. 

Vacation--I keep thinking about taking a week off to get stuff done, and then realising✈ that I'd probably just sit around and amuse myself on the computer, and get nothing accomplished... 

Laughter--To be expected, when my family gets together.  We love to laugh.  Sit us down to eat, and the puns start flying; leave us there long enough, and we begin uniting efforts to make my mother crack up (by no means an easy task).  This can be somewhat daunting to guests.  As jeanniemac stated long ago, "Dinner at the [name redacted] cannot be described; it can only be experienced."§ 


†Reading, and I throw a decent pot with some practice. 

☎I really predate the focus on learning disabilities.  I'm not at all convinced she's right, and if I do it's quite minor, but it's true that I can't do much of anything that requires fine motor control in the fingers. 

☂Almost.  

☛The recent upsurge in fairytale TV amuses me, and I admit to being a fan of OUAT, but that ain't exactly quality stuff.  Try Castle Waiting (thank you cincoflex!) and Robin McKinley if you want the good crack.  Or even Charles deLint, though his quality wobbles all over the place. 

✈Still stuck between American English and British English.  Sigh. 

§We hand out magnets if they don't run screaming.  

"Find the nearest book to you, turn to page 45, and read the first sentence: this describes your sex life in 2012."

Since I don't have a sex life, this is purely for amusement purposes. And it's plenty amusing. I'm sitting right next to a full bookcase, so nearest doesn't exactly apply. Have a selection.

The lady in black and her friend had always been very fond of the Città Vecchia. -- Which is eh enough, except that the book was published in 1897. Giovanni and the Other, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Anne's stunning announcement put my brain on HOLD.  --  *snerk*  Who's Anne?  Magnificat, Julian May (the UK paperback)  

Who was that man?  --  *howls with laughter*  Tales of the Restoration, David & Karen Mains, Ill. Diana Magnuson  

New species these days tend to be invertebrates.  --  Now that's just disturbing.  Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time, Richard Conniff

"You'll never make a jeweller," he whispered to her.  --  Well, no, probably I won't!  The Door into Sunset, Diane Duane 

And that's enough of that. 

Snabbled from...somewhere.

What's your guilty pleasure? List 5 movies/TV shows you have a hard time justifying. Don't justify them....just tell us why you love 'em.

1. The first one that comes to mind is of course Independence Day. There's so much wrong with this movie, from the science to the attitude, but there's also so much to love. Irresistibly quotable. It doesn't pass the Bechdel test, really, but I do like the female characters all the same. Plus, doggie!

2. Solarbabies. Whatever you have to say about this movie, I don't want to hear it. The concept's original, or if not is a riff off an obscure British kids' book, and I do enjoy a good postapocalyptic tale. I adore Bohdai; that was exactly the sort of thing I wished to have happen to me when I was a kid.  Heck, I'd take it now.  And I love how the good side wins against terrible odds.  

3. Time Trax, which has not aged well.  On a recent rewatch I was appalled by its attitude towards women.  And yet, Dale Midkiff still makes me melt, and he had the gift (and still might!) of treating the stock female characters who passed through as real in a way I find hard to describe.  Also, the vision of the future was pretty interesting.  

4. The Boy Who Could Fly, which never was appreciated as much as I thought it should be.  Because it's spot-on, in so many ways, and yet doesn't quite do the expected thing, much to my everlasting delight.  Also, have you noticed the cast?  

5. Hackers, which is an object of much scorn, but by golly it's fun.  And contrary to common expectations, Ms. Jolie can act, and quite well too.  And I always want to know more about Razor and Blade.  Plus, any club where you can rollerskate inside is cool.  

Snabbled from trialia: 

Go look at your blog/journal. Find the last fandom-related thing you posted. The characters in that post are now your team-mates in the Zombie Apocalypse. How fucked are you?

The Criminal Minds team?*  Are you kidding?  I'm going to be helping save the world! 


*see earlier entry!

• Comment with "Come at me, bro"
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions. 

Because mingsmommy was kind to me... 

1. You are, bar none, one of the most talented and creative writers I've ever read. Where do you find inspiration? 

*blush*  Thank you! 

Well, it's more like inspiration finds me, occasionally using bloodhounds and searchlights.  I'm very intuitive that way, which sounds good but can be a real hassle; I usually have to wait for the idea to smack me upside the head.  It's not that I don't sometimes come up with a plot through deliberate "what if"; but the best ideas usually come out nowhere and demand to be written down. 

These days, inspiration seems to be nurtured by a really intriguing movie or TV show, but sometimes I read something and think "hey, what if it went this way instead?"  

2. Obviously, you are incredibly well read. That somehow makes me feel justified in making this a two part question. What is your favorite novel? Under what circumstances did you first read it? 

Oh, whine, you're going to make me choose?  :P  There isn't just one!  I love the Chronicles of Narnia for its hope, and The Secret Garden because my mother read it to me after my brother was born, and the Secret Country trilogy because it's what I and my friends wanted to do as kids, and the Tale of the Five series because it's just fantastic.  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and Call of the Wild were two of my early favorites.  I wore out a copy of The Wounded Sky traveling across the U.S. and back when I was fifteen.  The Rains of Eridan.  Shards of Honor.  Crimson Roses.  Finn Family Moomintroll.  Robin.  The Spellkey, read at my grandparents' in California, along with Silver Woven in My Hair--had to get a long lease from the library for those.  Dragonflight, which I've probably read over a hundred times, and was given to me by my mother's best friend, who also introduced me to the wonder of Pilgrimage and The People (see Ingathering for all their stories), among others.  

I suppose if my apartment were burning, the first thing I'd throw out the window would be They Stand Together because I had such trouble getting a copy, but it's not a novel and it's probably easier to replace now.  

3. I always say we shouldn't have regrets because even the things we see as mistakes or missteps have led us to where we are, and where we are is exactly where we're supposed to be. But, sometimes, I do wish I'd done a couple of thing differently. What is something like that for you?

I would have declined the opportunity to have a boyfriend, way back in my sophomore year of college.  Some people may be able to make themselves fall in love, but I am not one of them, and I knew it then and went ahead anyway.  I hurt him, and that is something for which I have not forgiven myself. 

There's all kinds of excuses for it--I was young, love's always a risk, it was a necessary experience for both of us--but I knew better than to behave like that, and did it anyway.  It still makes me a little sick.  

4. Would you rather cook or clean?

Cook, most definitely!  Or bake, if given the choice.  Not that I'm particularly skilled at any of it.  One of my small fantasies is to make enough money to afford a cleaner.  

5. What is the oddest thing that ever happened to you? 

Difficult to say!  Probably it's a tie between knowing ahead of time that my brother would fall into my grandparents' pond when we were kids, and the whole haunted dorm thing during college.  Oh, and there's the bit with my mother's earrings, but I promised her I wouldn't tell that story.  Nah, the other two are weirder anyway. 

Thanks for indulging me!  ;) 

Snabbled from mingsmommy and trialia. 

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

Note: I've done this kind before, so two of these are recycled since no one guessed them the first time. 

( Quotes...  )

* Reply to this post with ICON ME! and I will pick five of your icons. (Probably!)
* Make a post (including this info) and talk about the icons I chose.
* Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
* This will create a never ending cycle of icon glee :)

As obliged by aj!  If I can figure out how to embed the little suckers... 

( Cut to save space. )

Memeage snabbled from all over the place; credit goes to cincoflex for the play on letters.  Obviously I am not taking this at all seriously. 

List 20 things you are starting with I am. The a mustn't be left out.

1.  I am a bringer of cookies
2.  I am a character in search of a plotline
3.  I am a dvocating safe sex
4.  I am a fool, love, a fool, love, for you
5.  I am a greeable in the right mood
6.  I am a holly rather than an ivy
7.  I am a jam-eater--straight from the jar, with a spoon
8.  I am a keeper of Traken, or would be if they'd ever get back to me about that application
9.  I am a lso known as...never mind
10.  I am a midlifer--what crisis? 
11.  I am a n oh p
12.  I am a puddle-stomper
13.  I am a queous--roughly 60% water
14.  I am a rabid fan, and I do mean rabid
15.  I am a s one with the universe, because two of me would be really hard to deal with
16.  I am a t a loss to explain this
17.  I am a very model of a modern cranky editor
18.  I am a wed by many things
19.  I am a xenophile
20.  I am a zon for almost all my book needs

Between power outages and loss of my home Internet, it's been an interesting few weeks.  So I will be lazy and post a meme snabbled from scullyseviltwin. 

the ❝that's my favorite!❞ meme
A FANFICTION PRAISE MEME
Spread it around, join in!