The Earth-Noise Intervene

You guys I forgot to say!

I have had a brief ("brief", it took a month) phone saga; Franziska, my beloved and much-maligned Palm Pre, just up and stopped working. I had to get a go phone for a while, and oh my god, I wanted to bash it against the wall. It didn't even have predictive texting, and it defaulted to speakerphone every time I got a call- and before you call first world problems on me, let me point out that my eight dollar Guatemalan cell phone was VASTLY preferable.

But now I have Eames! He is a gorgeous Samsung Captivate Glide, because if you one day see me standing on a street corner and preaching, twigs in my hair, wearing sackcloth, it will be because I have been forced to use a touchscreen keyboard. But he is sexy, particularly because of the feedback vibration (heh)- like, buttons on the screen feel like keys, because you get feedback off them. Like I said. Sexy. Also he is an Android, so there are more than five apps. I am not an apps person, but, y'know. Being able to edit my gdocs is great, and Evernote is pretty epic.

The only problem is that I feel like a jackass holding him up to my ear, because he is ENORMOUS compared to Franziska and not, like, phone shaped. IDK. But who gets calls anymore?

I was going to take a picture of him but, uh, he's my camera right now, and I was going to get a screencap, but I read the instructions on how to take one and I was like tl;dr. So instead, here is Pakal II, my desktop, as photographed by Eames (picture is HUGENORMOUS and, uh. Maaaaay have some interesting text on it).

PS did I mention my email alert is the sound of a bottle being opened? It kind of makes me feel like a drunk, but it makes me so happy.

So now my electronic kit is Eames, Pakal II, Motoko the Zen, my externals Wintermute and Cayce, and Thomas Raith the eee. However, Thomas Raith is not long for this world. :( He's working fine, but he's almost four years old. Like, he's been a workhorse and a real trooper, but it's time to move on, esp. because the OS is no longer supported and I can't install anything new (long story). So if anyone has opinions on netbooks? He's 10 inches, and honestly I don't want anything bigger than about 12. I am poss. considering Lenovos. They look pretty sexy and are comfortably in my price range.

Hurrah! \o/

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/388357.html. comments over there.

1. I'm cleaning up my oldest fic, right? Because I want everything from FF.net, Restricted Section, AFF, my journal, w/e, all on the AO3. This is the stuff from way back, the stuff that was the very first fanfiction I wrote consciously, knowing what I was doing what writing fanfiction.

So I did most of this work a year ago, and I imported all but just a few things from FF.net. It is important to note that I didn't read any of them; I just imported all of them and tossed them up. But oh god, there were a few things I had missed, and I read them. Oh my god that was an error in judgment. I just, goddamn.

But now, I've put up everything I can find (though now that I think about it I might need to recheck bloody_shorts), except for this one story.

It is, without a doubt, bar none, the worst story I have ever written in my entire life. This is not 100% shocking, because it was the second story I ever wrote, following my (adorable and harmless) Mary Sue, and it was the first porn I ever wrote. I remember having SUCH TROUBLE because I was 17 AND THREE QUARTERS YOU GUYS and it was SO SCARY to click the "I am over 18" button because I was afraid of the INTERNET POLICE.

You think I'm lying. You sit here and read all these kinky stories I been leaving all over the place, and you do not understand that I am a Good Girl at heart. I have been known to follow the Letter and not the Spirit, is what I'm saying.

So I don't know what to do about this story. I thought it wasn't available anywhere on the internet except behind a login at Restricted Section, but I just found it on my AFF profile. I'm so torn, because I'm a completist, and I feel that you have to own your mistakes. But y'all, this, this may just be too bad. We may have crossed the Rubicon on this one. I'll damn sure link to the sporking if I do post it, though (if I can find it, it's not tagged on the comm I know it's in).

So IDK. I'm not linking you to it if I post it. You can find it your damn selves.

2. WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME OF THE EXISTENCE OF CAN'T SMEG, WON'T SMEG. YOU ARE ALL FIRED.

Ohhh my god, you have no idea how many fond memories I have of being a tiny Sabine, sitting in front of BBCA watching Can't Cook, Won't Cook and Ready Steady Cook. And if you didn't watch it on BBCA, you missed the best part, because it had American translations at the bottom. Like, it would have helpful little bars when they used a non-American term for something ("The courgette is also known as a zucchini!") or some food item that's not commonly used in America ("Crème fraîche is similar to sour cream" or "Clotted cream is... okay look we're not a hundred percent on what it is, but it tastes pretty good, so let's roll with it.").

That plus Red Dwarf = one ECSTATIC Sabine.

3. Random: Don't tell me what it is, but do you have your credit/debit card number memorized? We're talking about the number proper, from the front of the card, not the account number.

I have always had my debit card number memorized, and this seems to blow people's minds. Seriously, though, y'all, if you have a MasterCard from an American bank (regional banks, at least), the first eight numbers for any card number drawn on a specific account are always going to be the same, and the last four you need all the time for verification; it's only four numbers you have to memorize.

Why is this hard? Am I just being weird again?

I am particularly perplexed by this, because my mother thinks this is an amazing skill, and she has Masters (Masterses?) in both math and accounting.

4. So this is going around again, pocky_slash being the proximal cause: Post the first sentence (or three) from every WIP you're currently working on, even if it's very short. Then invite people to ask questions about your WIPs. With any luck, the motivation to take that WIP one step closer to completion will appear as if by magic!

The "first" part doesn't work for me- can't be buggered- But here are some bits anyway. I think this is all XMFC, but it may please you to note that the Atlantis story farthest up the queue is labeled "what what (in the butt)". As one does.

( The working titles = best part. Also these got real long somehow )

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/381011.html. comments over there.

1. Am I alone in this, or is The Usual Suspects an ENORMOUSLY slashy movie? I have just seen it for the first time, you understand, and love it unreservedly because I have a hardon for unreliable narration, but I mean, everybody seems like they're about thirty seconds from fucking everybody else.

TO THE AO3

2. Dear children, I am ready to go HOME because being with my parents is, as always, driving me MENTAL. For various reasons it's much worse this year, but the one saving grace is we're not going out to see my extended family. Lord. I want to go home and sit on my couch and perhaps sip some wine and definitely watch lots of movies and TV I haven't caught up on.

3. Okay, here's the thing with the LJ/DW thing:

There is nothing, nothing in this whole thing that I would like better than fandom to just pull up stakes and move en masse to DW. It's not a "let's stick it to LJ" thing- as much as I love to stick it to the man- it's a "hey, we could be doing so much better for ourselves" sort of thing. We could leave something that is starting to become kind of rickety and busted-ass for the new hotness- and unlike certain other LJ clones I could mention, they're actually committed to, y'know, being a real thing, not something cobbled together in someone's basement to get around LJ's TOS.

That being said.

I'm not going to stop crossposting. The whole reason is the people on LJ. As much as I can wave the DW flag, I didn't even want to move over at first; I wouldn't have unless people I liked hadn't stopped/all but stopped using LJ. And I can do that, I can do what I can, but I'm not going to ditch my friends because they won't move.

I'm also not going to close comments; almost all the posts on this journal are 1) friends-locked RL posts 2) fic posts. If I turn off comments, 1) my LJ friends can't comment on locked entries (I am sure there is a way to do this through openID, but, really, that's not going to happen) 2) my comment count will go down on fic posts (no, trust me on this one, people really will not comment if you don't give them to option to do it where it's most convenient).

So. For the foreseeable future, you can find me in both places, but if it gets to the point where I feel the need to move, I'll be moving to DW, not back to LJ. That ship has sailed.

Okay. Back to the porn and the cat macros.

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/365563.html. comments over there.

This dream was so strange I feel like it needs to be saved for posterity. ( LA, Space Boyfriends, fake Christmas trees, etc) )

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/359131.html. comments over there.

1. There is no more liquor in the world, because arymabeth and I drank it all last night. We may have started drinking liquor that was not, in fact, of this world. I got a new book of cocktails (which I highly recommend), and we definitely made a dent in it.

And now I have three different bottles of bitters, so hey, that's something.

2. Reverse Bang is finally finished and sent off to the mods! \o/ Now to do all the things I was putting off in order to finish. /o\

3. I swear there was something else I was going to say. Uh. IDK. I may possibly be a little hung over.

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/318021.html. comments over there.

Hello, livejournal/dreamwidth. I am coming to you live from the Memphis International Airport, where I have been for quite some time and will be for quite some time more.

It has been quite the ordeal over the past two days. I had a late flight out of Pittsburgh yesterday to Atlanta, then on to Nashville... and then the Atlanta airport all but shut down, and my flight was canceled.

So I went to the airport early to get my shit together, and the lady at the ticket desk said, "Okay, you're scheduled to fly out at eleven."

"Is that eleven tomorrow?" I asked.

"No, on the eleventh," she replied.

"Good lord," I replied. "If I have to overnight, let me overnight in Memphis."

And lo, I got to Memphis, and shadowen came and picked me up... in the driving snow. And the roads were so bad that my mother said, "GOOD GOD GET A HOTEL ROOM."

And yea, verily, we got a hotel room, where we ate foods and stared at each other for a while and went to bed early. We woke up late-ish this morning and had brunch, then she brought me here, to the Memphis Airport, where I am flying standby for the 7:20 flight to Nashville and, of course, talking to you on the expensive wireless internets.

But, the conference was really hella fun, and while there was drama, it was drama at a completely different school that I have NOTHING to do with. And I hung out with all the twitter linguists (there are a lot of us), and it was good times, including when I stood up during the American Dialect Society Word of the Year vote and exhorted the crowd to "hide yo syntacticians, hide yo sociolinguists."

It may be on youtube.

And now I am killing time until it is appropriate to go to the airport bar. I think it's totally legit.

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/285662.html. comments over there.

There's something I feel like I need to say, because there's always this talk going around about appropriation and slash and who gets to talk about who. So let me say this about the end of DADT:

I'm not celebrating this for fictional people. That this changes the stories I get to write about people who don't exist- that's cute. That this changes the lives of real people who I care about- that's important.

I'm celebrating it for people like my cousin and his husband, who met in- and left- the military. I'm celebrating it because I believe every American has the fundamental right to choose whatever the hell life they please, even if it's a life of dodging bullets. I'm celebrating it because this move will make our armed forces stronger. I'm celebrating it because DADT was fucking stupid. I'm celebrating it for people like me, for whom the military has always been a closed option.

I'm not under the impression that this is the end- this is one important step in a larger struggle. We will be fighting about this tooth and nail for years to come. But right now, on this day, I feel like we deserve a little joy. And, yeah, if that means having fun with our little paper dolls, I'm fine with that.

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/280581.html. comments over there.

1. This is the kind of afternoon I'm having: I put pants on so that I could go and collect my mail (wherein I found my new big subby wristband), then immediately took them off again. Now I am, as you can often find me of a Saturday, sitting in my underpants, drinking a beer, listening to David Bowie, contemplating making some brownies.

I have, it should be pointed out, totally earned this beer and underpants time, as I spent the whole morning working on my paper for this conference next week. And hey, my underpants even match my shirt. It almost looks like I planned it.

2. ( Very mild butt-related TMI )

3. intoabar is almost over! I am both excited and relieved!

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/270761.html. comments over there.

1. Everything I do is better when I am wearing this:

( Cut for picture )

Everything is just a little bit funnier and happier when I am in it. It is presently about twenty degrees too hot here to be wearing it, and guess what? I am anyway.

1a. Did I mention that arymabeth and I have started a tumblr called fuckyeahjacksonanddoc? Because arymabeth and I have started a tumblr called fuckyeahjacksonanddoc.

1b. It's really nice to be in a fandom with, essentially, no one in it. Like, I'd kind of forgotten what it was like to be in a small fandom, and it's good to be doing that again. I'm really burnt out on all the jockeying for position that comes with big fandoms, because I'm just past the point of caring about it. I feel vaguely guilty, but, y'know, don't expect much out of me any time soon, writing wise, if it involves any fandom with more than about sixteen people in it. It's more than that, too- I'm at the point where I'm writing the same SGA story over and over again, and I'm sick of it. It's not even a very good story.

2. On a happier note, did I mention that I am going to see MASSIVE FUCKING ATTACK next month at Moogfest? Or that I am going to see Rifftrax Live, like, in person, because it is once again being broadcast from the theatre three minutes from my house? Or that I going to see Joel McHale next weekend?

It is a pretty sweet time to be going to concerts with me, honestly.

3. We are over 100 signups for intoabar, and we still have ten days left! \o/

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/259986.html. comments over there.

So. Dragon*Con 2010.

Oh my god, this report is over 3800 words long. This is why I don't write con reports. But anyway, here we go.

( Thursday: Transit )

( Friday: The horrors of prereg, Billy Zane )

( Saturday: Nerds on Parade, Venture Bros, Adam Savage, Telesilla, Nuts on the Road )

( Sunday: What the fuck. )

( Monday: Transit. Again. )

TL;DR

Dragon*Con 2010: The Year We Accidentally Stalked Doc Hammer.

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/255607.html. comments over there.